LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Slielf.4-|\/-3^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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-£r!i^a iry _A-.j£.mi 




COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS 



BY THE L/fE 

JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN, D.D., LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OF FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE, LANCASTER, FA., AND FORMERLY 

PRESIDENT OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF "THE REFORMED CHURCH 

IN THE UNITED STATES" AT MERCERSBURG, PA. 



EDITED BY 

HENRY M. KIEFFER, D. D., 

OF THE CLASS OF 187O, 

AND COMPILED FROM THE EDITOR'S NOTES OF THESE SERMONS 
TAKEN AT THE TIME OF THEIR DELIVERY. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

By ^?V. Nl. REMIvY, Pin. D.. 

PRESIDENT OF THE ALLENTOWN FEMALE COLLEGE. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

Reformed Church Publication House^ 

907 Arch Street. 
1891. 



X. 






-VN^^ .^ 



Ths Library 

OF Congress 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, i8qi. 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN, D. D., LL. D. 

THIS VOLUME 

A student's grateful tribute to the name of 
A VENERATED TEACHER, 

AND AN affectionate ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

OF THE BLESSINGS OF 

HIS MOST VALUED INSTRUCTIONS 

AND 

MOST CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE. 



THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



It is a subject of very frequent remark, and of very general 
regret, that the late Dr. John Williamson Nevin left so little 
of his profound teachings in permanent form. Though a 
man of the greatest ability, and most eminent amongst the 
leaders of thought in this country, he bequeathed very little 
to posterity upon the printed page, ^ * carrying with him when 
he died," as Dr. Thomas G. Apple, one of his fellow- profes- 
sors, has well expressed it, '' the greatest and best part of all 
his powerful thoughts." 

True, we have his ^* Biblical Antiquities," written at Prince- 
ton : and his masterly articles in the old Mercersburg Review 
remain to us, a most rich treasure of theological and philo- 
sophical thought ; while many pamphlets, addresses and news- 
paper articles still continue to exhibit, to those who may be 
so fortunate as to have the opportunity of reading them, the 
masterly grasp of his wonderful mind. But beyond this, very 
little remains to us in printed and permanent form. 

Especially is this true of the remarkable sermons delivered 
by him to his students at Mercersburg and Lancaster, con- 
cerning which it is well said in '^ The Life of Dr. Nevin," by 
Dr. Theodore Appel — ^^His great sermons, very. many of 
them, were well worthy of preservation in book form, 
although he never thought of anything of the kind. Now 
they live only in the memories of those who heard them. 
At the present day they would be quite as valuable to thought- 
ful readers as his published articles or books. In the latter 

5 



6 THE EDITORS PREFACE. ^ 

he addressed the head ; in the former he appealed much more 
to the heart. ' ' 

With the exception of an occasional discourse prepared 
for a special purpose, it was never the custom of this great 
man to write out any of his sermons. From the beginning 
to the end of his ministry his sermons were prepared without 
writing, inasmuch as, very early in his pulpit work, he dis- 
covered that in the preparation of a written sermon he 
invariably fell into ^^the essay style," which he conceived to 
lack, in his own case, the freedom and force so highly 
desirable in the preaching of God's Word. The practice of 
preaching without the written manuscript, adopted thus early 
in his ministry, gained for him the high commendation of his 
revered father, who conceived it to be every way more agree- 
able to the custom of the Church than the lately introduced 
novelty of sermon reading; and the method adopted in his 
early days clung to him to the end of his life. As a conse- 
quence of this, his life-long custom, there remain no manu- 
scripts of any of those most truly thoughtful discourses which 
he delivered, on ordinary occasions, to his intelligent congre- 
gations at Mercersburg and Lancaster, composed, for the 
most part, of his students, his fellow-professors and their 
families. 

With the purpose of rescuing from oblivion at least the 
substance of a few of these remarkable sermons, this volume 
appears. A few words may be needful to explain the method 
and manner in which the sermons herein contained have been 
preserved. 

It was the custom of the editor of this volume during his 
undergraduate days at Franklin and Marshall College, at Lan- 
caster, Pa., and during his course in the Theological Semi- 
nary at the same place, to take very full and careful notes of 
many of the sermons delivered by Dr. Nevin in the College 
chapel. This he did simply for his own personal benefit, and 
with no special purpose, at the time, of turning his manuscripts 
to any account subsequently. Being accustomed to taking 



THE . EDITOR'S PRE FA CE, 7 

down Dr. Nevin's lectures, on the week-day in the class- 
room, on the Philosophy of History, Esthetics and Ethics, 
which, like his sermons, were always delivered extemporane- 
ously from a few scant notes (and with such inspiring fresh- 
ness and power as those who were privileged to hear them 
will never forget), the editor of this volume had acquired 
some facility, perhaps, for his self-imposed Sunday task. The 
notes, being rapidly taken in pencil, were fully written out 
shortly after the delivery of the sermon, and while it was 
still fresh in mind, and then laid away with no thought ° 
whatever of the use they were to be put to twenty years 
afterward. 

And well do we remember how the venerable Doctor used 
sometimes to look sharply down at us from the pulpit on the 
Sunday, as we were busy with paper and pencil, no doubt 
wondering what we were at. We were afraid that he might, 
perhaps, be somewhat annoyed by our actions, though we 
were bent upon no mischief certainly. He never called us to 
account, however, but let us alone in our quiet corner with 
our work, whatever it might be. 

Well, also, do we remember the outward, and in some 
regards the untoward, circumstances in which these sermons 
were preached. The chapel in our days at college was rather 
a cold, bare and uninviting-looking room. There rises before 
the mind, as we think of it, the plain, gray, rough-cast walls ; 
the long, narrow windows of clear glass (afterwards frosted, 
indeed, but not much improved by the process), without 
ornament or decoration other than shades of uncertain mate- 
rial, and age equally uncertain ; old-fashioned settees, painted 
yellow; a cabinet organ in the choir-loft; a small, white- 
painted altar in front of the pulpit, the pulpit itself being 
also white in color and elevated on a platform, which struck 
the beholder as being perhaps a trifle higher than either good 
taste or convenience would suggest — art had certainly bestowed 
but a modicum of its riches on the old College chapel. The 
very chair occupied by the preacher was of the most ordinary 



8 THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. ^ 

kind, without upholstering or ornamentation, until the year 
1870, when a change was observed. A note appended to the 
MS. copy of a sermon preached by Dr. Nevin, and given in 
this volume, on '^The Way of the Transgressor," says: 
'' This sermon was preached on a very stormy day, March 
27th, 1870; on which day, be it known unto you, that three 
certain antique walnut pulpit chairs, of a Gothic style, made 
their first appearance in the College chapel, being the gift, 

we are told, of Mrs. Ellmaker." This was the first sign 

of any attempt at the improvement of the appointments of the 
chapel. In the year 1873, however, the College chapel was 
enlarged and improved ; but at the time of which we speak, 
it was plain and bare even to the verge of Puritanic simplicity. 
But, Dr. Nevin was there ; and they who were amongst the 
favored few in being privileged to sit beneath the sound of his 
voice, might well be oblivious to the extremely plain and bare 
surroundings — might well excuse the absence of the charms 
and graces of ecclesiastical art, mural decorations, 

** And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim, religious light — " 

in consideration of the presence of a man so truly great. 
Very strange it seems, too, that a man of such masterly 
ability should have preached on the profoundest themes to 
congregations so disproportionately small ; for at no time 
during our college days did the venerable Doctor address 
more than about two hundred souls on the Lord's Day, the 
students always constituting the bulk of the audience. He 
should have had thousands to hear him ! 

But Dr. Nevin was not a popular preacher. The ordinary 
hearer could not well understand him, his thoughts being 
usually too profound, and his language probably somewhat too 
scholastic. It is commonly admitted that, in the ordinary sense 
of the word, he was no orator. Yet there were times, and these 
neither few nor far between, as every old student of his can 
well recall, when without having recourse to any of the 



THE EDITOR'S PREFACE, 9 

rhetorical accessories, but relying purely upon the power and 
greatness of his thought, he spoke as men are seldom heard 
to speak — -times when pouring forth truths well-nigh too great 
for utterance, he held his auditors spell-bound, himself at such 
times being quite as deeply and powerfully affected as any 
amongst his hearers. His manner was always somewhat hesi- 
tating, especially in the commencement of his address— a 
peculiarity due, it is thought, to his early determination to 
preach extemporaneously — and sometimes he paused painfully 
for a word ; but as he warmed up in the discussion of his 
theme, this hesitancy gradually ceased, and the full tide of 
his thought began to come rolling in grandly upon the hearer, 
with magnificent sweep and overwhelming power. 

It argued no small degree of general intelligence in the 
hearer that he could understand and appreciate the discourses 
of this remarkable man. For this reason it was, no doubt, 
that many persons in ordinary assemblies found difficulty in 
listening to him. They could not keep pace with his thought. 
Well does the writer recall the bewilderment with which he 
first listened to this truly great man when he went to college 
in the fall of the year 1866. Dr. Nevin was at that time 
engaged in preaching a series of sermons on the Prologue to 
the Gospel of St. John. These discourses were rather in the 
nature of exegetical comment than ordinary sermons, being 
very profound and masterly expositions of this most profound 
part of God's word. And well do we recall how utterly 
incomprehensible they seemed to the writer, then a Freshman 
at college. How much would we not now give for some such 
poor report of those remarkable lectures as we have been able 
to make of other sermons of Dr. Nevin' s taken (and under- 
stood — let us be thankful for that ! ) at a later day. 

Nor is it at all to be wondered at, as something unaccount- 
able or even strange, that Dr. Nevin was not commonly 
understood or even appreciated by ordinary hearers. Like 
all great leaders of thought, and founders of schools, he 
necessarily addressed the few rather than the many. Never- 



10 THE EDITOR'S PREFACE, ^ 

theless he did reach the people eventually — not directly, but 
indirectly, through the ipany students whom he trained in 
philosophy and theology. The Reformed Church in the 
United States has been very largely moulded by his thinking, 
and to him many a preacher within its communion owes a 
debt he never can repay; while more than a few of his 
students, now in positions of influence in civil life, some of 
them in lofty station, are applying to the affairs of state the 
philosophical principles wherein they were trained by him, 
when they were boys at college. 

With delightful recollection, and with feelings akin to 
reverence do we recall that venerable man of God, as we 
knew him in our College days, in the class-room, and in the 
pulpit of the College chapel on the Lord's Day; a man of 
grave and venerable appearance, and most impressive presence ; 
his pure white hair a crown of glory, and in his face the out- 
shining of a great mind and a noble soul. Though seemingly 
stern and severe, yet was there never a more truly kind- 
hearted man, nor a teacher who enjoyed in a higher degree 
at once the respect and the affection of his scholars. The 
very presence of such a man in an institution of learning 
must always be of vast account, quite aside from the actual 
amount of information imparted in the class-room. Such a 
man carries an atmosphere with him — the moulding and 
powerful atmosphere of a strong and noble personality. And 
it was truly something very beautiful to see how, without 
exception, the students of Dr. Nevin looked up to him, 
admired and loved him. 

The Sermons herewith given to the public are not, by any 
means, what Dr. Nevin himself would have made them, had 
he written them out with his own hand. In order that those 
readers who are not familiar with his style may have some 
opportunity of seeing what kind of work came from Dr. 
Nevin' s pen when he wrote out a sermon with his own hand, 
it has been thought well to append one such discourse to this 



THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. \\ 

collection. No little difficulty has been experienced in 
making a choice ; but it has seemed well to present that here 
given, a sermon entitled ^^ Nature and Grace," being '^A 
Baccalaureate Sermon preached to the late graduating class of 
Franklin and Marshall College, on the evening of the last 
Sunday in June, 1872, in the First Reformed Church of Lan- 
caster, Penna. , ' ' and afterward published in The Mercers burg 
Review for October, 1872 — a most able and most admirable 
discourse, truly ! 

The rest of the sermons, taken from our own note-book, do 
not profess to be exact and verbal reports and reproductions, 
such as an accomplished stenographer might furnish. They 
are merely notes taken by a student during his under-graduate 
days at college, and subsequently during his course in the 
Theological Seminary ; but, having been taken on the spot, 
it is believed that they will be found to reproduce, with some 
degree of fidelity, the peculiar style of Dr. Nevin, both as to 
the thought and the expression. As the rays of the sun's 
light in passing through some unworthy medium necessarily 
lose somewhat of their original brilliancy and power, even so 
has it undoubtedly chanced in this case. Still, it is hoped 
that these utterances of a great mind, though given to the 
public in this poor way, may be found to retain at least some- 
thing of those remarkable qualities which they possessed for 
the fortunate hearers at the time they were spoken. 

The words of Arrian in his dedicatory letter, prefixed to his 
edition of The Dissertations of his venerated preceptor, Epic- 
tetus, come to our mind as being in a measure appropriate to 
this publication — ' ' I did not write the words of Epictetus in 
a manner in which a man might write such things. Neither 
have I put them forth among men, since, as I say, I did not 
even write them. But whatever I heard him speak, those 
things I endeavored to set down in his very words, so to pre- 
serve to myself for future times a memorial of his thought 
and unstudied speech. Naturally, therefore, they are such 
things as one man might say to another on the occasion of the 



12 THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. ^ 

moment, not such as he would put together with the idea of 
finding readers long afterwards. . . . To me it is no 
great matter if I shall appear unequal to composing such a 
work, and to Epictetus none at all if any one shall despise his 
discourse ; for when he spoke, it was evident that he had but 
one aim — to stir the minds of his hearers towards the best 
things. And if, indeed, the words here written shall do the 
same, then they will do, I think, that which the words of 
sages ought to do. But if not, yet let those who read them 
know this, that v/hen he himself spoke them, it was impossible 
for the hearer to avoid feeling whatever Epictetus desired he 
should feel. But if his words, when they are merely words, 
have not this effect, perhaps it is that I am in fault ; perhaps 
it could not have been otherwise. ' ' 

It will be found that these discourses contain some valuable 
comment on the Church Year. The Church Year possessed 
great significance for Dr. Nevin, although he always exercised 
a wise freedom in the observance of it, following the spirit 
rather than adhering to the letter. This is evident from 
the fact that his texts were always chosen in harmony with the 
leading theme for the '^ Lessons of the Day," but were never 
slavishly confined thereto. This habit is well illustrated in 
the sermon on ^^The Law of Spiritual Vision," in that on 
^^The Glorious Prince of Salvation," and in others con- 
tained in this volume. 

The date given at the end of each sermon marks the time 
of delivery. 

The Editor herewith gratefully acknowledges his obligations 
to the following persons : 

To Miss Alice Nevin, of Lancaster, Penna., and to her 
brother, Wilberforce Nevin, Esq., of New York City, for per 
mission to use the plate of the portrait of their father as a 
frontispiece to this volume. 

To the Rev. Dr. D. M. Wolf, of Spring Mills, Penna., 
for valuable assistance in the notes of one of the sermons 
herein contained. 



THE EDITOR'S PREFACE, 13 

And, finally, to the Rev. Dr. Wm. M. Reily, President of 
the AUentown Female College, for his most generous assist- 
ance and his unfailing encouragement during the preparation 
of this work, with the sincere belief that but for him it would 
never have been undertaken or brought to completion. 

May these discourses, presented in this way to the Church, 
be blessed of God and accomplish great good in the present 
generation, as they so eminently did when spoken from the 
pulpit of the College chapel to a generation of professors and 
students soon to pass from the scene of earthly trial, labor and 
care. 

H. M. KlEFFER. 



Third St. Reformed Church Parsonage, 
Easton, Pa.^ June i, i8gi. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



BY REV. W. M. REILY, PH D. 



The aim of the editor of this collection of sermons in 
giving them to the public is, and of course should be, none 
other than that which their author had in view in preaching 
them. It is certain that the latter would have said that it is 
all contained in the familiar words of our Lord : '^ And this is 
life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." John 17 : 3.* 

■^ The following is from a sermon on " Give us this day our daily bread,' ' 
preached before the Synod which met at Easton, October, 1878 : " ' Thou 
hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as 
many as thou hast given him ; and this is life eternal, that they might know 
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' What 
does such language mean, if not that the whole Gospel is comprehended in 
the manifestation of God, brought to pass in the accomplished glorification 
of Christ's humanity as it could be in no other way? This was the 
supreme object of his incarnation. * To this end was I born,' he sajs, 
* and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear wit7tess to the 
truth,^ Whatever may be said of other doctrines then, they can have no 
real worth or force except by comprehension in what he himself makes to 
be the sum of all when he says, * Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son 
also may glorify thee.' This is the doctrine of all doctrines ; the article, 
we may truly say, of a standing or falling church. But how little, alas, 
we hear of it in our evangelical pulpits and schools at this time ! Our 

15 



1 6 INTR OD UCTOR V NO TE, 

Of pious and most worthy parentage, and reared under the 
influence of a high order of Christian culture, Dr. Nevin 
early consecrated himself to the gospel ministry. His ideal 
was a lofty one, and nothing was left undone to render him- 
self " a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing 
the word of truth."* Accompanied by the blessing and 
prayers of a God-fearing father, he went through a full col- 
legiate course, and then entered the Theological Seminary at 
Princeton. Here he so far distinguished himself for prudence, 
industry and talent, as well as Christian earnestness, that he 
was chosen to the temporary position of an assistant professor- 
ship in that venerable institution of learning. As a monument 
of his scholarship at this early age, we have the well-known 
work on ^* Biblical Antiquities," which the American Sunday- 
school Union engaged him to write. 

Surely he must be regarded at this time as fully equipped 
for the great work of life which he had in view, that, namely, 
of preaching the blessed Gospel of the Son of God. ^^Yes," 
some one may say, *^ theoretically at least." But read the 
^* Antiquities," and see the spirit of the man! Everything 
bears evidence of a life in closest contact, not only with the 
written word of Revelation, but with that divine and eternal 

Christianity is weak for want of it ; and can have no strength against the 
** armies of the ahens " (infidel science and Roman superstition), so long 
as this want endures. That is the revival the church now needs ; and it 
can come only from the Lord, as a new epiphany through his Word ; as the 
prophet of old prays : ' Oh, that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou 
wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, 
as when the melting fire burneth; — to make thy name known to thine 
adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence ! ' " 

*Chrysostom explains the Greek word translated "rightly dividing" 
thus : " We praise even those husbandmen who cut their furrows straight ; 
so also the teacher is to be commended, who follows the canon or rule of 
the Divine Oracle." A modern commentator adds, and describes the 
method of Dr. Nevin well in the words : " One who wanders not to the 
right or the left, but goes forward directly in the path of truth who, at every 
step, takes for his rule the revealed Word of God." 



INTR OD UCTOR V NO TE, 17 

order of being whence it springs, and of which it is the bearer 
and representation. 

If there was one idea stamped upon the mind and memory 
of Dr. Nevin by his profound and extensive studies in the Old 
Testament, it was that of the Hebrew prophet. In the his- 
tory of the pre-Christian world are nowhere to be found char- 
acters so deserving as these of the predicates ^^ great and 
strong." He here learned what it is to be a prophet of God. 
Jehovah chose only those to be such who had a deep sense of 
the force of past revelations, who knew the meaning as well 
as the history of God's covenant with Israel, who were ready, 
at any cost, whether of health, comfort, name, life itself, 
jealously to vindicate the conditions of that covenant, both 
in the form of defending and comforting the faithful, and 
rebuking and condemning those who violated it. Such men 
as these were not only called by God, but endowed by hea- 
venly inspiration, ajid supported by heavenly agencies. He 
found thus that what he had consecrated himself to was not 
the phantasm of a vain imagination, as, alas, is so often the 
case, but an office whose outlines were clearly defined before 
his mind, an office which, on the one hand, involved self- 
sacrifice, courage, fidelity, patience, but, on the other, was 
attended by unspeakably blessed promises. 

Just as these Israelitic heroes bore witness for the truth, in 
the name and instead of Jehovah, so would this young preacher 
devote himself to the work of witnessing for Christ, — this 
work — ^nothing more, nothing less.* But in one respect, 

* The following is from manuscript notes of a sermon on " Christ, the 
King of the Truth." *' When we receive the truth, then do we emerge 
from the dark and narrow prison cell of the natural understanding, and 
receive a knowledge which comes from above, and Christ Himself will put 
His seal to it that the truth which we receive comes from God. He is 
*the first-bom of every creature,' and being in Him we shall know the 
truth, and shall bear witness also, in our own lives and persons, to that truth. 
Oh, how solemn the Christian ministry, under this view, as being in its 
very nature a personal witness-bearing to Him who is the Truth, as well as 
2 



1 8 JNTR OD UCTOR Y NO TE. y 

beside, of course, many others, he differed much from them. 
They were men that Hved among the people, and understood 
the people. And when they raised their voices in speech, the 
people understood them. They knew how to reach the popu- 
lar heart, for the salient experiences of local, civil, and national 
life (all of which were indissolubly bound up with the religious), 
were had in common by Prophet and Burgher. The language 
of the former, accordingly, was that of the latter. It involved 
the by-words, the maxims, the figures, the symbols, that were 
in vogue, as well as constant allusions to places, persons, 
events, which were constantly before the eyes or in the ears of 
all. Dr. Nevin was not pre-ordained to be a man for the 
people. We believe that he would have rejoiced in exercising 
ability of this kind, and that he looked with something like 
envy upon those who were in possession of popular gifts. 
When, appearing before the massive assembly gathered in the 
venerable Tulpehocken church to hear him preach in German, 
he told his hearers that he was about to preach to them^ 
on a text in ^^ Johamiis Evdngeljiiniy'' how glad would 
he have been if he could have proclaimed to that honest 
and truth-loving people the plain facts of the Gospel 
with the same simplicity, directness and unction with which 
God endowed many of our fathers, his co-laborers, and 
in which some of their German-preaching sons do not come 
short. 

But this was not Dr. Nevin' s sphere. His vocation was of 
a different kind. Still a preacher of the Gospel he would be. 
And how he preached almost until the end, the reader has an 
opportunity of learning in the body of this book. But to be 
a witness-bearer for Christ — this was his vocation, and this he 

the Way, and the Life ! Put your seal, in the way of a hving self- witness, 
to the truth of God — then will you be prepared for the great work of recon- 
ciliation. The ministiy of Jesus tThrist, in the true and proper sense, is not 
merely a study or a preaching of doctrine ; it is not theological speculation : 
it is putting the seal to God's word by a personal, living exhibition of the 
truth." 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 19 

was destined to become, in a degree of eminence reached by 
few in this broad land of ours. 

Dr. Nevin's mind was so constituted as to fit him to be a 
leader of thought. Leaders of thought are not generally 
understood at first. So with those who produce Ivhat is epoch- 
making and original in other spheres, for example, that of art. 
Beethoven's music and Wordsworth's poetry is becoming 
intelligible to the greatest mass of those who are musically or 
poetically inclined, but by degrees. Dr. Nevin's mind natu- 
rally turned to fundamental principles, abstract questions and 
the like. Most persons have a disrelish for matters of this 
kind; and even the learned are beginning to tell us that 
speculation may have been a useful occupation in the past, but 
that its work is done, and what the present and future genera- 
tions have to concern themselves about is facts. 

Dr. Nevin's lot was cast in a most momentous period of the 
history of the Christian Church. No one felt this more deeply 
than himself. He compared the situation to the breaking up 
of the fountains of the great deep. And many great minds 
agreed with him, and do still agree. A recent English theolo- 
gian, in a work widely read, says that the crisis now at hand 
is of more significance than the Reformation of the Sixteenth 
century."^ The reason is that that conflict was confined chiefly 
to the world of morals ; whilst the present one covers the 
world of thought. The leaders of that day raised up their 
voice against the old church because it had fallen away from 
the pure life of the early Christians; the agitators of the 
present are assaulting the church because, they say, it has all 
along been advocating tenets which are contrary to reason. 

A man of Dr. Nevin's active mind and broad observation 
soon opened his eyes to all that the situation involved. Like 
a Hebrew prophet, concerned above all things for the safety 
of the ark of Jehovah, his heart was filled with anxiety, and 
his spirit was agitated within him. He keenly observed the 

•^ "Lux Mundi." 



20 INTK OD UC TOR Y NO TE. V 

gathering phalanxes of the enemy ; but he was none the less 
watchful as to the condition of things in the Church's own 
camp. Was all right here ? He had reason to fear. If weak 
points are seen, these must be attended to before the enemy 
can be successfully coped with. He thinks he has discovered 
some. He brings to bear upon them all the light which a 
great student of God's Word, and of Church history, like him- 
self, could command. With the utmost candor and sincerity 
of purpose he makes bold to indicate them. At once the cry 
was raised from all sides, '^ An enemy in the camp ! ' ' He stood 
his ground like a hero. He went back to the sources of his- 
tory, and sounded the depths of modern learning. He 
employed all the arguments, marshalled the authorities, and 
utilized his vast dialectic skill, to convince all who would 
listen that his view of the state of the case was correct. 
The only policy, as he tried to point out, which could insure 
success, was that of holding fast to what was absolutely vital 
and essential on our side (for example, the fundamental facts 
of the Gospel as set forth in the Apostles' Creed), and at the 
same time yielding to the foe what it could rightly call its own 
(for example, the legitimate results of strictly scientific research, 
although they might conflict with the literal sense of the 
Sacred Scriptures).* Some said, ^^ You want to carry us back 
to Rome;" others said, ^^ By your rationalism you want to 
take us directly across to the enemy's ground." 

Few men of God, during the present century, have been so 

^ *' In the meantime, to all practical intents and pm-poses, the whole 
cause of what was once considered to be the inspiration of the Old Testa- 
ment, was allowed to lapse quietly into a sort of pious myth, much like the 
inspiration of Homer with the Greeks. Any real divine life, then, there 
may ever have been in it, fairly smothered out of it now by the preponder- 
ance assigned everywhere to its outward letter. This is made to be the 
great battle-field, accordingly, for an endless war between the Bible and 
secular science ; where the champions of the Bible are sure to come off 
always second best, because fighting, in truth, always on the same side with 
their naturahstic opponents." — Mer, Rev.^ 1878, p. 33. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE, ' 21 

rudely denounced and decried as was Dr. Nevin. His followers 
had to bear reproach with him; and of course the church also, 
in whose institutions he was stationed as a teacher, and of which 
he will always be regarded as the bright and shining light. 
He was ever ready to withdraw, and at times did withdraw, as 
if to say, ^^I will bear the shame alone;" but the Church, 
through her highest judicatory, always said ^^No. We endorse 
your course, and say to you, Work and teach according to the 
dictates of your conscience, and the responsibility is ours. ' ' 
He never sought position, nor honor, nor gold. It was the 
cause of truth that was the object of his concern. Of Dr. 
Nevin it can ever be said, as it can be of but few men, he 
was not governed by the dictates of the flesh, but by those of 
the Spirit. - 

From the nature of the case it is evident what the character 
of his literary productions would be. The slur has been cast 
upon him that he was ^^ nothing if not polemical." How 
much ignorance is betrayed by such a remark ! How could it 
be otherwise? Then, too, all his discussions turned upon what 
lay deep down below the surface of the current literature of 
the day. Besides this, the character of his work in the college 
and Seminary rendered it necessary to move in a line of 
study and labor upon which only more advanced scholars 
enter. His style is accordingly not that of a writer for the 
people; and much of what he has written can be appreciated 
only by those who have time and inclination to follow closely 
in similar pursuits.'^ 

■^ Is there not something pathetic in language like the following in which 
he seems to bewail as an infirmity his inability to make his thoughts clear 
to the mind of the general reader ? " It seems to us exhausting^ even to 
the extent of spiritual deliquium, only to think of such a thing (namely, 
the idea that there is nothing more in the Bible than what * thought or 
speech can compass in their natural human form ' ) . Not without some 
sense of such fainting in our spirit, therefore, we leave the subject here for 
the present. And we will add also, not without some inward resonance of 
that mournful complaint of the ancient Jewish prophet, ' Ah, Lord God ! 



22 INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 

In the sermons that follow the reader has the opportunity of 
becoming better acquainted with this eminent servant of God. 
They appear in a form which makes his deep thoughts, 
indeed, his profound inner experience, in a measure accessible 
to all. 

They were delivered at a most interesting period of his 
history. There was a time when he thought it was necessary, 
in view of the looseness of view prevailing on subjects con- 
nected with the church, her authority, her sacraments, her 
hallowed forms of worship, to insist with stress and emphasis 
upon what was objective and historical. We might say, re- 
spect for properly constituted authority was the ruling prin- 
ciple of his life. But later in his career it dawned upon him 
that there were questions connected with the claims of the 
Scriptures to be the inspired word of God, which had been in 
a measure overlooked by him.* More than ever does he 
become convinced that the living Christ, once crucified, but 
now exalted upon His throne in glory, speaks to men out of 
and through the Bible. Men do not know what a storehouse 

they say of me, ' Doth he not speak parables ?" ' " — Close of sermon on 
" The Bread of Life." 

" I have endeavored to show in my article Christ the Inspiration of His 
Own Word (God knows with what oppressive sense of weakness), 
(italics ours), the transcendent significance of the Man Christ Jesus in the 
economy of the world's redemption." From the last of Dr. Nevin's pub- 
lished writings. — Review^ '^'^'^Z, ?• 13- 

■^ " In our past controversies with regard to baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
we may not have done justice always to what must be considered in this 
way the true and real pre-eminence of the Word above all sacraments. In 
contending for the faith delivered to the saints in regard to the sacraments, 
we may have failed to intone properly what the presence of the Lord in 
his Word means, without which there is no room to conceive of his pres- 
ence among men in any other form. Should this have been so, let us trust 
that it may be so no longer; while we unite mind and heart in seeking an 
understanding of divine inspiration better than that which now too com- 
monly prevails, and join, one and all, on bended knee, in daily prayer, 
* Open thou mine eyes, O Lord, that I may behold wondrous things out of 
thy law.' " — Mercersbu7'g Review^ 1879, p. 29. 



INTR OD UCTOR V NO TE. 23 

of heavenly treasure is here at hand.^ Especially in these 
days is the value of the Old Testament underestimated, f In 
so far as his teaching had fallen short in the past, with God's 
help he would make that right. In his later writings he falls 
into a mode of expression more obscure and recondite than 
ever. Even his preaching was said to be in an unknown 
tongue. 

These sermons fall in what may be called a transition period. 
They are characterized by marked moderation and clearness. 
They are free from the polemical, the speculative and mystical 
elements elsewhere to be found. The topics are varied. The 
plain facts of Scripture and truths of the Gospel are presented 

■^ " They are oracles of God ; not dead, but living ; not dumb, but as the 
voice of seven thunders sounding from heaven. Such only is the miracu- 
lous constitution of the Bible, by v^^hich, in boundless difference from all 
worldly philosophy and science, it is found to be a real medium of com- 
munication between men on earth and angels in heaven, bringing all 
together as one new creation in Christ Jesus." — Review, 1882, p. 41. 

t " The Decalogue, we have already said, underlies the universal structure 
of the Old Testament revelation, distinguished as * the Law of Moses, the 
Prophets and the Psalms ;' and the quality of its inspired origination out of 
heaven from God, as we have now considered it, is to be regarded then as 
extending into every part and portion of that revelation ; making the whole 
to be what is to be understood by the Word of God. The Jewish history, 
the Jewish commonwealth, the Jewish civil institutions and laws, so far as 
they are brought forward in the Bible, the Jewish ritual in all its details, 
come alike under the supernatural character and rule. So it is with every 
one of the psalms; and so it is also with all the prophets. 

" And so we might go on indefinitely ; but here we stop for the present. 
It is enough for the object of this article, if it may serve only in a general 
way to establish, from the demonstration of the Holy Ghost in the Word 
itself, the truth of the angelic thesis, The testimony of Jeszis is the spiidt of 
prophecy. That means necessarily, as we have seen, that the self- witnessing 
power of the Lord's life actually lives in the Holy Scriptures, as their ani- 
mating spirit or soul, so that it may be said of them universally, as of the 
ark of old, Jehovah is there. How that great wonder can be — the 
* flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and yet the bush not consumed ' 
— -is another question, going deep into the doctrine of God ^nd the science 
of the human mind. But the first thing needed here, as in all the mysteries 



24 INTR OD UCTOR Y NO TE, \ 

in a simple and practical way. They are helps to devotion, 
supports to faith, and words of comfort to heavy hearts. 

If any one wishes to learn more of the character and life of 
Dr. Nevin, of his pious boyhood and student life, his brilliant 
career as Professor in the Presbyterian Seminary at Allegheny, 
of his sacrifice in accepting the call to the obscure and humble 
school of the prophets at our own Mercersburg, of his self- 
denying labors and heart-cutting tribulations there, of the 
vicissitudes that followed, especially of his heroic devotion to 
the church, to the cause of the truth, to the interests of the 
many faithful pupils still honoring his memory, of his martyr- 
like patience, and of his Patmos-like retirement, where, as St. 
John, he lived in the realities of the spiritual world,* he may 
find all in the two works written by loving spiritual sons, who 
in this way have laid garlands of fragrance upon his grave. 

^'Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who 
depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faith- 

of Christianity, is full heaven- wrought persuasion of the reality of the fact 
itself, which is thus made to challenge any such deeper study (Matt. xvi. 
17). Where that persuasion of faith is wanting, as with men commonly, 
all pretended farther study of the subject can never come to more than a 
helpless, self-reliant floundering of the understanding in the asphaltic sea 
of naturahsm — the burial-place of Sodom and her sister cities of the 
Plain." — Mercersburg Review, 1877, p. 212. 

^ " The morning star is to be a recompense of that purity which is the 
fundamental requirement of the whole epistle. According to 2 Pet. 1:19, 
the morning star symbolizes the full dawn of the New Testament day. 
According to Rev. 22 : 16, Christ on the way of His speedy Advent is the 
bright Morning-star. The promise, therefore, is that the pure and unadul- 
terated Christian as a victor over fanaticisms {i. e., wild and spurious forms 
of Christian life, whether hierarchical or sectarian), shall, in advance of 
others, behold the morning-star of the neiv time, the last time, the Coming 
of the Lord, as if that morning-star were his own ; nay, he shall even point 
to the morning-star as the object of his prophecy. He shall stand ' in the 
morning radiance of eternity, in the full enjoyment of Christian hope. 
Christian progress, the true ante-celebration of the Coming of Christ.' " — 
Lange on Rev. 2 : 28. 



INTR OD UCTOR Y NO TE. 25 

ful, after they are delivered from the burden of the fleshy are in 
joy and felicity ; we give Thee hearty thanks for the good exam- 
ples of all those Thy servants , who, having finished their course 
in faith, do now rest from their labors. And we beseech Thee, 
that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of 
Thy holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, 
both in body and soul, in Thy eternal and everlasting glory ; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen, ' ' 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

^i)t ^ttonti Suntrag in atibent. 

"THE DAY-SPRING FROM ON HIGH." 

^t. Bluk xxi. 25-33. 

" And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the 
stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity ; 
the sea and the waves roaring ; men's hearts failing them for 
fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the 
earth ; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken T .... page 35 



SERMON II. 

W^t dTirgt Stiniag after W^t ©pipfiang. 

THE SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH. 

^t. iluk ii. 41-52. 

" Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the 
Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to 
Jerusalem after the custom of the feasts . .page 43 



SERMON III. 

W^t Secontr Suntjag after C|)e ©ptpj^ang. 

"THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD." 
^t. plaltft^bD xiv. 22-33. 

^ And straightway Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a shipy 
and to go before Him unto the other side, while He sent the multi- 
tudes awayP . . .' page 52 

27 



28 CONTENTS, ^ 

SERMON IV. 

^I)e dFtiurtt SuntJas after Ci)e (Kpipl^ang. 

THE PRECIOUSNESS OF FAITH. 
2 '^tin i. I. 

" Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that 
have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness 
of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. ^^ page 60 



X SERMON V. 
^!)e Sixti) Sunlrag after Ci^e ©pipfians. 

JESUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR. 
Softlt i. 51. 

^* And he saith unto thein, Vei'ily, verily I say unto you. Hereafter ye 
shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and 
descending on the Son of Man.^"* P^gc ^9 

SERMON VI. 

Ci)e Stinlrag fiefcire ILent— (JBuin^uageisima. 

THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL VISION. 

IKatt^tbD vi. 22-23. 

" The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, thy 
whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy 
whole body shall be full of darhtess. If therefore the light that 
is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ! ^^ .... page 79 

SERMON VII. 

Cf)e Ci^irli Sun^rag in ^tnX. 

HELP FROM ABOVE. 

P^alm cxxx. V. I. 

" Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.^^ .... page 87 



CONTENTS, 29 

SERMON VIII. 

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR. 

proiueris xiii. 15. 
** The way of transgressors is hardP page 96 

SERMON IX. 

W^t ^nX% 5unt»aB m Uent— ^alm Suntrag. 

SUFFERING AND REIGNING. 

^6ilippianj5 ii. 5-11. 

^^ Let this mind be in you ^ which was also in Christ Jesus : who^ being 
in the form of God^ thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; 
but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form 
of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men ; ajzd being 
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became 
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross T page loi 

SERMON X. 

^%t dFirist Suntrag after iSaj3tei:> 

« THE GLORIOUS PRINCE OF SALVATION." 

p^tiir^kijj ii. 10. 

" For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain 
of their salvation perfect through sufferings P page 108 

SERMON XI. 

Cf)e 5eccinir Suntrag after ©aistei:. 

SEEING THE FATHER. 

3lDf)TC xiv. 9. 

** Jesus saith unto him. Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
hast thou not known me, Philip ? He that hath seen me, hath 
seen the Father ; and how sayest thou then^ Shew us the 
Father?'' . . . .- page 114 



30 CONTENTS. ^ 

SERMON XII. 

^"^t dFiftf) Suntjag after ffia^tec. 

THE BELIEVER'S CROWN OF LIFE. 

iR^bHation iii. II. 

" Behold^ I come quickly : hold that fast which thou hast^ that no man 

take thy ci^own.'''' page 122 



SERMON XIII. 

^%u\\%m\ Bag. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORTY DAYS. 
%tX^ i. 9. 

''^ And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was 

taken up ; and a cloud received hi?n out of their sight T . . page 128 



SERMON XIV. 

Cf)e dFdurtenitf) Suntrag after Crinitg. 

OBEDIENCE THE WAY TO A KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH. 
Jcif)Tt vii. i7. 

' If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether 

it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. ^^ ....... page 133 



SERMON XV. 

Ci)e Nineteentf) Suntiag after Crtnitg. 

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST ALONE, 
jmalt^ito xi. 27. 

' All things are delivered unto me of my Father : and no man knoiveth 
the Son but the Father : neither knoweth any ma7i the Father save 
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.^^ . page 140 



CONTENTS, 31 

SERMON XVI. 
W^t ^toentieti^ S^ntrag after Crinitg. 

THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 

Hultie vii. 22. 
^^ To the poor the Gospel is preached^ page 146 



^ SERMON XVII. 

Ci)e Ctoentiet^ Sttnlrag after Crmitg. 

CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION OF THE SOUL. 

JHaltttto xi. 28-30. 

" Come unto nie, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 

give you restP page 153 



SERMON XVIII. 

Cf)e Cb3entg::C^irtr Suntrag after Crinitg. 

SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES. 

2(o6tt V. 39-40. 

" Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and 

they are they which testify of w^." page 162 



SERMON XIX. 

^i&edFourti^ Suniag iiefcre Etibent. 

THE UNBROKEN COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS. 
JHaltfj^ki ix. 18-26. 

" While he spake these things unto them, behold there came a certain 
ruler, and worshipped him, sayhtg, My daughter is even now 
dead ; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall 
liveP ^. . page 167 



32 CONTENTS. ^ 

SERMON XX. 

THE PERSON OF CHRIST THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF FAITH. 
3of)Tt vi. 28-29. 

** Then said they unto hlnty What shall we do^ that we might work 
the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto thejn, This is 
the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath 
sentP page 175 



SERMON XXI. 

THE VOICE OF WISDOM. 

^robjerbs viii. i-io. 

* Doth not Wisdom cry ? and Understanding put forth her voice ? 
She standeth in the top of the high places, by the way in the places 
of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at 
the coming in at the doors: Unto you, O men, I call, and my 
voice is to the sons of man.''^ page 183 



SERMON XXII. 

Cf)e 5tint»aB before atjbent. 

THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 
2 ^tXtX iii. 3-14. 

^Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, 
walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where is the promise 
of his coming P^^ ♦ page i^ 



CONTENTS. 33 

SERMON XXIII. 

THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 
2 ^^t^r iii. 10-14. 

*' But this day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ; in the 
which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the 
elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works 
that are therein shall be burned up, ^"^ page 194 



SERMON XXIV. 

a ISaccalaureate S^tmon. 

NATURE AND GRACE. 
io^rt iii. 13. 

*' No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from 

heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.''"' .... page 201 



COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 



THE DAY-SPRING FROM ON HIGH. 

®S« dfio^ptl 3^iS8on for lf)t iia^. — ^1. 9luk xxi. 25-33. 

" And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; and 
upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity ; the sea and the waves 
roaring; men^ s hearts failing them for fear , and for looking after those 
things which are coming on the earth ; for the powers of heaven shall be 
shaken'* 

It may seem strange, at first sight, that a passage of 
this kind should have been selected for our reading and 
meditation during the season of Advent, which has for its 
theme the appearing of Christ in the flesh. One might 
rather expect that the Scripture lessons for this season of 
the Church Year would be of a more cheerful tone, that 
they would partake more than they do of the general 
character of joy expressed in the song of the angels to 
the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem, announcing 
"good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.'' 

On the contrary our attention is called away in an 
apparently different direction altogether, not to the be- 
ginning of the Christian religion, but to its consumma- 
tion and end, the mind being invited by the lessons 
appointed for our reading to the consideration of that 

35 



36 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

state of the world in which the heavens and the earth 
are regarded as being in commotion as a sure and cer- 
tain prognostication of the coming of the Son of Man, 
just as the bursting of the buds on the trees in the spring- 
time is an unfaihn^ harbinger of the coming summer. 

The propriety of the selections, however, appears when 
we consider the close and intimate relation existing 
between the first advent of our Lord in the flesh and 
His second advent in the clouds of heaven; and partic- 
ularly when we reflect upon that profound and universal 
law, the operation of which we observe everywhere, in 
the physical quite as well as in the ethical world — that 
law according to which darkness must ever go before 
light, danger must ever precede deliverance. 

The first coming of our Lord in His incarnation brings 
into view this deep fundamental law that holds everywhere 
in the constitution of the world. We see the operation of 
this law in nature, considered even as standing apart 
from the gospel. We look on nature as manifesting 
itself in different systems, the one outward, the other in- 
ward. There is a necessary original connection between 
the two, as there always is between darkness and light, 
sorrow and joy, labor and rest, tribulation and glory. 
The latter state cannot come in any case except through 
its preceding opposite condition. There is no light un- 
less darkness precedes. This great law forces itself on 
the conviction of all men universally, even amongst the 
heathen. The heathen philosophy saw full well, by the 
natural reason, and without the aid of revelation, that 
the path of freedom was and always niust be the path of 
self-denial. The Stoic philosophers especially acknowl- 
edged this fact, in opposition to the teachings of Epicu- 
rus, which they knew could tend only to moral defeat 



THE DA Y-SPRING FROM ON HIGH, 37 

and death. They knew full well that if anything like life 
and freedom were to be attained by the human spirit, it 
must be by the renunciation of the world. If man is 
ever to pass up into a higher life the laws and powers of 
the lower world now about him must be subdued and 
overcome. 

It is in harmony with this law that our Saviour says, 
"If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself 
and take up his cross and follow me;'' let him renounce 
the world and meet tribulation, and so shall he find peace 
and joy, according to that promise, *^ If any man serve 
me, let him follow me, and where I am, there shall also 
my servant be/' We meet the same law everywhere in 
the declarations of our Saviour — *'What shall it profit a 
man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul:" ^'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but 
whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gos- 
pel's the same shall save it;'^ and those words of comfort 
to His disciples on the eve of His departure out of the 
world — *' Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall 
rejoice ; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall 
be turned into joy." 

This same law which thus operates in the higher king- 
dom of grace and in the moral world is revealed in the con- 
stitution of nature universally, and is felt and acknowledged 
by all men — the law that requires that darkness should 
precede light. And we are prepared thus to see how 
necessary it was that darkness should precede the com- 
ing of Christ, who is the true light of the world. In one 
view, indeed, all that is great, high and glorious, espe- 
cially all advancement that has been reached in the 
progress of history, is typical of the coming of Christ — 
of His first coming as well as of His second (for the two 



38 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. V 

are indissolubly conjoined) ; but it is also true that the 
dark side of our existence involves a promise or pledge 
that the Son of Man shall come. This promise lies in 
the conception of the order to which we have adverted, 
first darkness then light, first labor then rest, first tribu- 
lation then joy. Between these two there is a necessary, 
natural, original relation. All pain and sorrow carry in 
them a promise of something good to come, not in the 
way merely of fancy or imagination, but by reason of the 
fixed and settled constitution of the world. As we say, 
'The darkest hour is just before the dawn," so in the 
moral world, the darkest times of the world's life are the 
surest pledges of the coming of Christ in glory. 

We meet a verification of this in a broad and gen- 
eral view of history. Previous to the coming of Christ 
the times were dark. Undoubtedly there was a large 
amount of progress amongst the Greeks and Romans, as 
well as in the world at large for four thousand years, in 
a moral, social, and even in a religious sense. But so 
far as there had been any gain in any of these directions, 
it must be regarded only as reaching out toward the full 
truth. The promise of help and relief for the world's life 
at that stage of its progress, however, lay not in its ap- 
parently hopeful achievements, but rather quite in the 
opposite direction. In the dark side of that old world- 
life, in the failures of that old-world history, we see a 
deeper prophecy and proof of the coming of Christ than 
in all these relative exhibitions of progress. For always, 
in that old world, along side of such gain and advance- 
ment, there was a continual progress in failure and de- 
feat, showing more and more, as time moved on, that 
the powers of our human nature are inefficient to bring 
about the redemption of the world. That long experi- 



THE DA Y-SPRING FROM ON HIGH. 39 

ment of four thousand years showed clearly enough that 
the world was defeated, and foiled in its hope of attaining 
by its own power what its consciousness demanded. 
And the prophecy of the coming of Christ was strong 
right here on this dark side. When all the efforts of the 
world had been pushed to their extremest limits, the 
world was still sunk hopelessly in the abyss of its mis- 
ery. Then it was that it pleased God to reveal Himself 
in the coming of Christ. 

We see thus that the religious failures of the old world 
prepared the way for Christ. The old systems, on which 
men relied, were foiled, shorn of their power and shown 
to be a delusion. We can thus see how the failures of 
the old world revealed the necessity for the coming of 
Christ. And it is only in this way that we are at all pre- 
pared to understand the long delay in human history 
prior to the coming of Christ. Why, it may be asked, 
did God wait so long before sending His Son into the 
world ? Why should four thousand years of human 
struggle, failure and misery have been allowed slowly 
and wearily to pass away ? Why did He not send His 
Son into the world in the time of Noah, or Abraham, or 
Jeremiah ? Because certain failures in the course of 
human history were absolutely necessary to make His 
coming at all intelligible to men. 

The relation which the sorrow and suffering of that 
old world bore to the coming of Christ, continues to 
hold good now in the life of the world at large, as well 
as in the experience of every individual man. Sorrow 
and affliction are followed by the coming of Christ by 
His Spirit, as He Himself promised, ''I will not leave 
you orphans ; I will come unto you.'^ These straits 
and exigencies of Christian life and experience are com- 



40 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

ings, continual comings of Christ to His people. Christ 
comes to His Church still as He came to His disciples 
on the sea of Galilee, for that occasion may be consid- 
ered as typical and symbolical of the Christian life. In the 
midst of the darkness and tempest on the sea of life 
Christ comes to us with reassuring words, *^ It is I ; be 
not afraid.^' So, too, in the Church at large. Christ 
always comes to resuscitate the expiring life of man. So 
long as men are at home in the world, so long are they 
unprepared for the coming of Christ. The man who 
feels at home in the outward conditions of health, 
strength and prosperity, cannot see Christ, cannot re- 
ceive Him. ^'They that are whole need not a physi- 
cian." Christ came not*' to call the righteous, but sin- 
ners to repentance." There must be a sense of sickness, 
and this is often accompanied by a breaking up of the 
outward circumstances of prosperity. Before Christ can 
come to any man that man must feel his need, just as 
the disciples on the sea of Galilee felt theirs. So it is 
universally. When men feel their need, are in extremity, 
know not which way else to turn, and have their vision 
unsealed, as it were, the scales dropping from their eyes, 
then they are in condition to receive Christ ; then do they 
begin to cry out, as Peter of old, '^Lord, if it be thou, 
bid me come to thee on the water.'' 

Therefore we should not at all wonder that, at this 
season of Advent, in the lessons appointed for our read- 
ing and meditation, sorrow and joy are so closely con- 
joined. The language employed in the Gospel lesson 
for the day is more or less metaphorical, but the out- 
ward signs here spoken of will, no doubt, accompany 
our Lord's second coming, although, as we all know, 
these signs are primarily applicable to the destruction of 



THE DA Y-SPRING FROM ON HIGH, 41 

Jerusalem, as is ^^^w in our Lord's declaration, " This 
generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled/' 

All this seems to be an argument against the popular 
supposition that the coming of Christ will be the result 
of the easy onflowing of natural forces and powers al- 
ready in the world ; that the progress now going on in 
the social and political world, in art and science and lit- 
erature, in the subjection of nature to the power of man, 
will eventually reach such a lofty stage of advancement 
as to usher in the millenium. Is not that the purpose 
for which Christ came into the world ? I am afraid not. 
All this progress and advancement may be a sign and 
assurance in one of those two ways in which the coming 
of the Lord may be foreshadowed or prophesied, (as we 
saw a moment ago), the partial and relative good possi- 
ble to human endeavor witnessing always, certainly, to 
the perfect and absolute ; but such a view of human his- 
tory and development as contemplates the millennium as 
possible to human effort, and as being the efflorescence 
of it, overlooks that great and fundamental, universal 
law operating in the profoundest depths of man's moral, 
social and religious nature — this namely, that darkness 
must precede the light. No doubt we are in advance of 
the times that are past ; but it seems unreasonable to 
suppose that these victories of a merely natural kind in 
the organization of the social and political world, will 
ever usher in the millennium. They did not bring in the 
first advent, and they will not bring in the second. 
When we have reached our highest possible advance- 
ment, only the coming of Christ will solve the problem. 
The deeper and more positive prophecy of the coming of 
Christ will no doubt be found at last in the helpless 
misery of humanity. Still side by side with the defeat 



42 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. \ 

and misery of our life, under one aspect, will go its pro- 
gress under another, so that we can truly look for the 
coming of the Son of Man when all around is progress 
and when we seem to be approaching the highest possi- 
ble perfection in the social and political world. 

There is a close inward connection between our sor- 
rows and the coming of Christ, although we may not be 
able to see how this can be. As only darkness can re- 
veal the starry world above us, so also only darkness 
can reveal to us the heavenly world from the depths of 
our own moral and spiritual nature. There is thus a 
close connection between the cross and the crown, and 
if our eyes were only opened that we could see, if our 
apprehension of spiritual things were only clear and 
strong, then should we regard all of life's sorrows and 
burdens as being, in the truest sense, blessings. 

December ^th^ i86g. 



SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH, 43 



^%t :Sfy^^^ <Suntrag after Cf)e ©pipi^ang. 

the: SKI.F-AUTHKNTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH. 

®f)t (Soj^pjel il:e5J50E for tt^ I9a2. — ^1. 3j\^t ii. 41-52. 

" Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Pass^ 
over. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after 
the custom of the feast,'* 

The mediatorial work of our Saviour completes itself 
in His resurrection and ascension. Between His incar- 
nation and His resurrection His divine human life was 
steadily unfolding itself in the way of a gradual progress. 
This progressive development in the life of the God-Man 
may be regarded as an Epiphany, which may be contem- 
plated either as a whole or under a narrower aspect. The 
Epiphany may be taken as referring to His birth alone, 
for example, or it may be extended so as to cover His 
whole life from beginning to end ; and even under the 
narrower view, it may be regarded as comprehending 
several successive stages, more or less clearly defined. 
When we examine these lessons assigned for our reading 
during the Epiphany season, we see that there is a close 
internal connexion between them. First we have the 
visit of the wise men, then the appearance of the Saviour 
in the temple at the age of twelve years, and next the 
manifestation of His glory in the beginning of miracles 
at Cana. It is not by accident that such a progress is 
observable in these lessons, but the selection has evidently 
been made with the wisest design ; for there plainly was 
such a progress in the Epiphany of our Saviour's life, 
beginning with His birth and reaching on with unbroken 



44 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

continuity, and with increasing fulness and power, to His 
final glorification when He sat down at the right hand of 
God. Even before the full opening of His own ministry, 
the Epiphany had already commenced in the preaching 
of John the Baptist^ who was enabled to foretell His 
coming and to point Him out as " The Son of God," by 
what occurred at His baptism. But, up to the time of 
the birth of our Saviour, all the events connected with it, 
although they carried in them an evidence for the divine 
Messiahship, were yet not enough of themselves to authen- 
ticate or make it sure. These events, though necessary 
as preparing the way for the true Epiphany, or self- 
manifestation of the Son of God, were largely of an out- 
ward or external character. And this self-manifestation 
of His glory and majesty involves different degrees, or 
successive stages, advancing continually from the more 
outward to the more inward in the unfolding of the 
wonderful life of the God-Man. 

First, then, we have the visit of the wise men from the 
east. The presence of Christ was manifested to them 
by the star, and then, shortly afterward, to all Jerusalem, 
by the excitement caused by the slaughter of the Inno- 
cents. This was an Epiphany, and one of great force 
and value so far as it went ; still it was largely external, 
and of one character with all previous evidence of the 
coming of the Messiah as this was furnished in the 
preparation for the advent of the Son of God amongst 
the Jews, and also in that preparation for the same which, 
as we can now see plainly enough, existed amongst the 
heathen. In both the Jewish and the Gentile world there 
was a manifestation or an Epiphany of the Messiah, His 
Advent making itself felt in the world long before it came 
actually to pass, in that wonderful preparation which was 



SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH, 45 

plainly going forward for many centuries, in a negative 
way amongst the heathen, in a positive way amongst 
God's chosen people, the Jews. In both cases that 
preparation was an evidence of His coming, as it was 
indeed in a profound sense an Epiphany of the Son of 
God in history. 

Now, the star in the east and the visit of the wise men 
belong to this kind of evidence, being yet, however, some- 
thing more ; for here was a miracle, nature testifying to 
the presence of her Lord. In this there is something 
exceeding all previous evidence ; yet, at the same time, it 
is of the same general quality or character as the former, 
being something relatively outward, external ; an evidence 
for the presence of the Lord of all coming from beyond 
and not emanating from His own person ; and therefore 
lacking the power fully to authenticate His presence and 
power in the world. Had there been no evidence besides, 
this of itself would not have been sufficient to produce in 
the minds of men such a conviction of the presence in 
the world of the Lord of all as to leave men without 
excuse. There must be something more, and something 
more convincing; an evidence arising from within, not 
from without the mystery of the Word made flesh — a 
breathing forth, a shining out from His own majestic 
personal presence. Without this kind of evidence, the 
fact of His being in the world could not have been 
authenticated in any other way — not by the world of 
nature, not by the world of history ; for it was a super- 
natural fact, and must of necessity be authenticated by 
an outshining, by an outstreaming of its own glory. 

We say, then, that the conception of the Epiphany 
requires that the evidence of what the Saviour was must 
proceed from His own person. We can see this plainly 



46 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, \ 

enough, for instance, in the events connected with our 
Saviour's baptism. In order that John the Baptist should 
be certain concerning the Messiah, it was not enough 
that he should know the Saviour personally, or should 
be fully acquainted with the Scriptures bearing upon the 
nature and office of Him that was to come — he must 
have another kind of evidence, an evidence proceeding 
directly and immediately from the person and presence 
of the Christ Himself; as we see on the day of our 
Saviour's baptism, when John '^ looked upon Jesus as He 
walked, and said. ' Behold the Lamb of God ! ' " 

For this reason it is that the festival of the Epiphany 
cannot stop short with an account merely of the visit of 
the wise men. We have a number of Sundays after the 
Epiphany, each with its lesson of some particular aspect 
of the manifestation of our Saviour's power and glory, 
there being in the Epiphany season, considered as a 
whole, a steady progress or gradual advancement in the 
development of its underlying idea. There was, evidently, 
in the life of our Saviour such a progressive unfolding 
or development. The exhibition of our Saviour's divine 
presence was not full and complete at first. It would not 
have been a true human life had it been so. We are not 
to suppose that the presence of the divine nature of Christ 
was a uniform fact either for Himself or for the world. 
It was not of a uniform character throughout, but sub- 
mitted to the necessary law of a gradual unfolding or 
development. There was a process or a progress analo- 
gous to the regular unfolding of our own human life, 
involving a profound mystery which we cannot at all 
fathom. 

This fact is brought into view in the passage of Scrip- 
ture which constitutes our text — the appearance of our 



SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH. 47 

Saviour in the temple at twelve years of age. He had 
grown up as an obedient member of the family of Joseph 
and Mary without revealing His own nature to others — 
and we must go even further than this, and say that He 
Himself was not fully conscious of His own nature, or 
His infancy would have been mere magic. There is no 
attempt in the Gospel narrative to emphasize His divine 
nature unduly, or to press its claims out of all proportion 
to the demands of the human nature which He had 
assumed. The evangelical record does not portray Him, 
for instance, as having performed a single miracle during 
His infancy, as has been done in the so-called apocryphal 
gospels which have come down to us, written by some 
who were no doubt eager enough to magnify the Saviour's 
power and glory. Instead, however, of doing this, these 
spurious, and often frivolous, narratives greatly detract 
therefrom. There is such a striking contrast between 
the miracles attributed to our Saviour in these false gos- 
pels and those which are narrated in the evangelical 
record that, to one looking at the matter rightly, there is 
in this very contrast one of the most clear, powerful and 
convincing arguments for the truth of the life of our 
Saviour as portrayed by the Canonical gospels. Had 
this wonderful life been a mere fiction, or an ingenious 
contrivance of man, the narrative never could have 
escaped such spurious and grotesque miracles as these. 
The more we compare the two, the one with the other, 
the more we contrast them, the more are we convinced 
and shut up to the conclusion that this is as certainly the 
true as that is certainly the false. 

In the Lesson for the Day we have the only notice that 
is taken of the childhood of Jesus. At the age of twelve 
years the Jewish children made a public profession of 



48 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, V 

their faith, and this occasion in the life of a Jewish boy- 
is, with singular propriety, chosen as the occasion of a 
perfect dramatic scene in the life of our Saviour. It is 
something very difficult to select one event in a life of 
thirty years with a view to making it the subject of a 
dramatic scene. Had any uninspired writer attempted 
this in giving an account of the life of our Saviour, this 
would have been the inevitable result — there would have 
been more than enough. In this view of the case, the 
scene set before us in the Gospel Lesson is a perfect pic- 
ture, a triumph of dramatic art. 

Our Saviour, here, is absorbed in hearing the learned 
doctors of the law, and in asking them questions, not to 
embarrass or confuse them certainly, but in perfectly 
good faith. His questions proceeding from a sincere and 
earnest childlike heart. He sat at the feet of the doctors 
desiring information and seeking to be instructed. His 
parents, as they went down from Jerusalem toward their 
own home, missing Him in the company, returned, and 
after three days, or on the third day, found Him thus 
situated, and asked with some tone of gentle reproof, 
*' Why hast thou thus dealt with us ?" a purely parental 
and altogether natural inquiry. He answered, '' How is 
it that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I must be about 
my Father's business ? " Then He obediently went down 
with them, and subject to them grew up to the full stature 
of manhood, His human life unfolding itself in an entirely 
natural and normal way in conjunction with His divine 
nature. 

This passage in the life of the Saviour is thus seen to 
involve an Epiphany far beyond that of the visit of the 
wise men, for it was a manifestation from Himself, an 
evidence given out from His own consciousness. It was 



SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH 49 

more inward than the other, deeper far, and made itself 
felt as something full of majesty ; for " all were astonished 
at His understanding and answers," even the doctors and 
His parents. '' But his mother kept all these sayings in 
her heart." 

His Epiphany, however, by no means ends here. His 
whole subsequent life is an Epiphany — a shining forth of 
the power, majesty and grace of His divine-human 
personality. But there are in the Gospel narrative certain 
grand and striking occasions of such a manifestation — 
occasions when His life displayed or revealed itself in a 
special way, and in a degree far above what was common. 
In the Gospel Lesson for the next Lord's Day, the Second 
Sunday after the Epiphany, we have a sublime illustration 
of this, in the miracle of the water turned into wine. 
*' This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, 
and manifested forth his glory" — even inanimate, physi- 
cal nature being made, in a manner in keeping with its 
own constitution, to testify to the presence and power of 
the Lord of all. The fact of His being in the world was 
indeed witnessed by the star in the east, but in this case 
nature, instead of merely testifying to His presence in an 
external and outward way, depends on Him, the Creator 
of all, and yields itself the medium for the shining out of 
His great glory. Nature was here, as it were, ethereal- 
ized in its own order, water passing up into wine. The 
significance of the miracle consists largely in this lifting 
up, this sublimation of nature ; for it was shown in this, 
the first of all our Saviour's miracles, that the old world 
of nature, suffering under the curse of sin, was not only 
brought under His power in an external way, but was so 
transfused by the power of His life as to render a resur- 
rection and glorification possible and certain. His power 
4 



50 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. s 

over nature is further shown in the selections of Scripture 
appointed for the following Epiphany Sundays —in heal- 
ing the sick, in stilling the tempest on the sea, and in that 
marvelous manifestation of His unspeakable glory on the 
Mount of Transfiguration. 

It is to be observed and carefully noted that the whole 
Epiphany of Christ is its own argument. This does not 
mean that every other kind of evidence is excluded, as 
being of no account. All such evidence as is drawn, for 
instance, from ancient history — both Jewish and Pagan 
— as a preparation for the coming of Christ, has its pro- 
per place and must be accorded its just weight, but is 
not of itself sufficient to authenticate Christ. So it is 
with all the Christian evidences, as they are called. They 
have their importance and their significance. If they 
had been wanting, we should lack the evidence that 
Christ had come, for they must accompany such a fact, 
though not of themselves sufficient to authenticate or to 
establish it. We cannot prove Christianity by miracles 
or by prophecy. We cannot prove it to an unbeliever 
in that way ; no, nor even to ourselves. '' Even though 
one should rise from the dead,'^ men would not, for that 
reason alone, believe. Such a conviction must be the direct 
and immediate result of a divine light from a divine life 
breaking in upon us. The design of the Gospel of St. John 
is just this — to set before us the birth, life, death — in a 
word, the whole Epiphany of Christ ; so that we are shut 
up to the irresistible conclusion that this was the Son of 
God. Not that we are to make no account of any other 
evidence — such evidence can indeed prepare the way to 
such a conviction — but if not accompanied or followed 
by that other, higher, self-authenticating power of the 
Truth, it must and will surely fail of that authority and 
weight which it otherwise might have. 



SELF-AUTHENTICATING POWER OF THE TRUTH, 51 

We can see how important it is for us to know this in 
our own experience^ to keep this kind of evidence before 
us continually, and to allow Christ to bear witness for 
Himself to our own spirits. In proportion as we do this 
will the glorious Epiphany of the Son of Man be found 
to break in upon us with its own overwhelming power, 
causing us to exclaim with St. Peter, *' Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God ! " — causing us to ex- 
claim, in the language of the people to the Samaritan 
woman, " Now we believe, not because of thy saying : 
for we have heard him ourselves, and k:now that this in- 
deed is the Christ, the Saviour of the world ! " 

January' g, i8jo. 



52 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



C^e S^conti Suntiag after Cf)e lEpipfianB. 

THE VICTORY OVER THE WORI.D. 

%t platti^h) xiv. 22-33. 

" And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go 
before him unto the other side^ while he sent the multitudes away, cS^j." 

A LARGE part of the Gospel consists of the parables and 
miracles of our Lord, which stand in close and intimate 
relation with each other. The parables result from the 
correspondence existing between the world of nature 
and the world of mind, or spirit. The two constitute 
one system, and have an inward harmony, being gov- 
erned by one underlying and fundamental law. To the 
mind of Christ the whole world was a parable. He saw 
the complete harmony of nature and spirit. His mira- 
cles are exhibitions of the power of His higher nature 
over the world. In both parables and miracles there is, 
undoubtedly, an inner sense, or spiritual signification, for 
those who have the eye to see, or the ear to hear, or the 
understanding to apprehend it. 

The occasion to which the text refers is replete with 
such significance. It is full of comprehensive and wide- 
reaching instruction. It is a striking picture, in itselt 
regarded, which is here presented for our considera- 
tion, and it is still more impressive and grand when we 
see in it an illustration — a parable, as it were — of moral 
and spiritual situations, surroundings and experiences ; the 
sea swept by the storm, the waves rolling high, the wind 
whistling and roaring over the deep, the ship tossed with 
the waves, the disciples alone and toiling at their oars. 



THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD. 53 

the Saviour up in the mountain praying. Seemingly 
forsaken, overcome by the power of the sea, all hope 
gone, the disciples are ready to despair. Then, when 
everything looks darkest and most hopeless, behold the 
Master comes walking, in calm majesty, over the tossing 
waters ! 

Observe the effect His approach produced upon the 
disciples : " And when the disciples saw him walking 
on the sea, they were troubled, saying. It is a spirit ! 
and they cried out for fear." For this is the usual feel- 
ing of men at the approach of what is, or is supposed to be, 
a supernatural presence — fear and awe. Then He re- 
assured them, " Be of good cheer : it is I : be not afraid/' 
They knew His voice, and in their simple trust in Him 
their fears disappeared. Peter, impulsive as ever, re- 
quests the Lord to allow him to come to Him on the 
sea. At the Lord's command he goes down, sees the 
danger, sinks, cries for help, is rescued. *^ And when 
they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then 
they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, 
saying. Of a truth thou art the Son of God ! " 

We have here a miracle, indeed, and yet a parable too, 
and one full of a manifold meaning, which may not well 
be put into words, yet is felt with power by the pious 
soul. The miracle may have different explanations, and 
varying applications, suited to different situations in the 
life of the individual or in the experience of the Church. 
But all such applications are embraced in its comprehen- 
sive sweep. For our present purpose we may see in it : 

L The general thought that all world-trouble serves 
to bring into view the person of Christ, wherever under 
the preaching of the Gospel that person has been made 
known. The relation of the world to Him, in its present 



54 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. y 

condition, involves a contradiction. The world has no 
power in itself to reveal Christ. In the end there must, 
of course, be harmony between nature and grace, but 
'* the end is not yet." The tendency of the world now 
is to obscure Christ and to veil Him from our vision. 
In times of worldly prosperity, in success in business, in 
the possession of earthly power and fame, it is very dif- 
ficult to fix the mind on Christ, or to understand Him. 
So it was with the disciples on the sea. There was no 
revelation of their Lord's majestic power, in this regard 
at least, so long as the sea was calm. But when the 
winds came sweeping down upon them, and they lost 
control of their vessel, and had no confidence in them- 
selves, and were in extreme distress and instant peril, 
then He came walking on the waters. At first they had 
no power to recognize Him, but were filled with terror 
and alarm. So it is universally with our life. We see 
not the stars in the sky during the broad light of the day, 
but only in the darkness of the night ; and when the 
night is the darkest the stars are the brightest. This 
world we know is indeed empty and vain, but this we 
do not and somehow cannot truly feel in times of out- 
ward prosperity. We need trials in the world to teach 
us the emptiness and vanity of the world. In this way 
also we are prepared to look to Christ for help, and at 
such times He reveals Himself to us by producing that 
state of mind whereby alone we can apprehend His pres- 
ence, nearness and power. 

II. We see, again, that as the world gi-ows dim to us, 
our inward vision grows clearer and stronger. In pros- 
perity we do not see the reality and power of the world 
of grace. But let the world once grow dark to us, and 
how soon we feel the need of something higher. Then 



THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD, 55 

the scales fall from our eyes, and we can see what before 
was entirely hid from our vision. 

This is brought out here in the miracle. In the tem- 
pest when all hope had failed, the disciples saw their 
Master with all the powers of nature under His feet. 
The first great lesson here is that we learn to apprehend 
the law that requires this world to disappear that the 
world beyond may be seen. All hope in this world must 
be given up before help can come from above and be- 
yond. And the second lesson here is, the relation of 
Christ to the world, as brought out in this miracle. Not 
as a common man does He challenge the attention of 
the disciples, but as being in His own person One who 
has mastered the world and all its powers. He is in 
Himself more than the whole world, and His victory is a 
victory because there was in Him, by virtue of the con- 
stitution of His person, a mighty, majestic, conquering 
power. This is brought out very strikingly in this mir- 
acle. 

In looking to Him as one who can give us the victory 
over the world, we have two things for our faith to rest 
upon. He stands before the disciples in this miracle, 
first of all, as belonging to the world, and not as having 
come down upon it, in an outward magical way, from 
some higher sphere. So He must appear to men gener- 
ally, in every age, if He would bring them salvation. 
There is in man a natural shrinking from the forces and 
powers of a higher, supernatural world. But Christ's 
presence in the w^orld is not unearthly, for He is a man 
in all respects as other men, the ideal and perfect man, 
and as such He belongs to this world. He is a partaker 
of our human nature. If He were not, there could be 
no consolation for us in His presence with us. He 



56 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, \ 

would be a mere spectre, having no power for our life, 
and being no object for our faith. 

Then, too, on the other hand, He was not of nature 
but above it. He was not as other men, subject to the 
powers of the world. As the ideal man having domin- 
ion over nature, He shows His disciples in this storm 
on the sea that the forces and powers of nature were un- 
der His feet. He comes to them, not as a spirit, but as 
their Lord and Master in human form. Not by doctrine 
can the world be overcome. There is no victory over 
the world apart from faith in His person. A true faith 
in Him sees and apprehends the supernatural in the nat- 
ural. There can be no saving faith in the supernatural 
merely as such, abstractly and apart from the natural. 
'' It is I,'' He says : '' be not afraid." Faith in the Lord 
must always unite these two. Aside from such union 
these can be at best only an empty and barren specula- 
tion, and no proper comfort or peace for the human soul, 
as we see in the fact that so long as the disciples here 
took Him for a pure spirit they cried out for fear. 

in. This miracle, or as we may also truly call it, this 
parable, exhibits the nature of faith. Faith is not a mere 
notion or fancy, nor is it a simple acknowledgement of 
the presence of the spiritual. It has to do with the ele- 
ment of the divine, indeed, but with the divine in organic 
union with the human. Faith in Christ is faith in the 
Son of God incarnate. It apprehends Him not only as 
''conceived by the Holy Ghost," but also as '^born of 
the Virgin Mary." It lays hold on Him as *' God mani- 
fest in the flesh." Faith needs to be always disting- 
uished from mere intelligence. It is the power of see- 
ing Christ as at work both in the Church and in the 
world of human history. All that flows forth from His 



THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD, 57 

person and work, the Church, the sacraments, mysteries 
as they all are, are included in the Creed as objects of 
faith. Faith is something far deeper than mere knowl- 
edge. It is not put into men magically, nor conferred 
upon them in any outward way, but must spring up 
from one's own nature, mind or spirit, having its roots in 
our incorporation in the order of grace, whose founda- 
tion is in baptism. It cannot grow strong by reasoning, 
by fancy, or feeling. It must be confronted by the prop- 
er objects of faith. These we must keep ever before us : 
and when they are seen, they can and will excite faith 
and call out the power of truth. The power lies in the 
object and comes from it. We see this in the case be- 
fore us. The disciples were under training. They had 
never thought of Christ before, neither did it occur to 
them during the storm to think of Him as walking on 
the sea. Hence, so long as they regarded Him as an 
apparition, there was in them a feeling of fear and 
terror, as believing that they stood in the presence of the 
purely supernatural. But so soon as they came to see 
Him as their Master, there was in Him a power of draw- 
ing out their faith. They hear His voice, ^* It is I." The 
inmost life and power of His being uttering itself in that 
voice, speaks to the inmost sense of apprehension in 
them. Peter says, '' Lord, if it be thou, bid me come 
unto thee on the water." That '' if shows that there 
was at first in his mind a doubt, and some hesitation, yet 
at the same time a readiness to yield : but his faith 
grows stronger through the power of the proper object 
confronting it in the person of the Lord. Hence the 
deep meaning there is in the creed ever placing anew 
before us the objects of faith. For faith must ever 
thus be held close to that which alone can awaken it. 



58 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. \ 

and in communion with which alone it can grow. By 
such communion we are apprehended and taken up by 
these objects into their own lofty and exalted spiritual 
sphere. We do not rise, we cannot rise of ourselves. 
So Christ appeared to His disciples on the sea as stand- 
ing on a higher plane, one to which they had to rise. 
The lower sphere does not and cannot of itself rise to the 
higher : the higher alone has power to reach down, lay 
hold of and lift up the lower to its own exalted place. 

For Peter there was a venture here, but not a blind 
one. He could not fortify himself by his own reason, in 
thus desiring to go down on the water. So must the 
sinner boldly venture himself on Christ. And behold 
the grandeur of the spectacle — a sinful man furnished 
with power to walk on the water, giving thus an exhibi- 
tion of the power over nature which was conferred on 
man in his original creation. He threw himself off from 
the natural knowledge he had, into the waters where he 
had nothing but the word of Christ. In such a sublime 
act as this, the soul passes from time to eternity. Faith 
is secure only so long as it is firm, steady, continually 
looking and clinging to Christ. This is the one only 
condition of its security. So soon as this ceases, faith is 
gone. Peter saw the winds boisterous and the waves 
tossing : he looked away from Christ to the elements 
around him, and began to sink, and cried out for help, 
'' Lord, save me ! ^^ 

This great miracle has a meaning as well for us as 
for the disciples. We are now in the world, whose 
symbol is the tossing, heaving, restless sea. We are in 
a frail bark at the mercy of the powers of the world 
which we of ourselves and in our own strength are help- 
less to resist or to overcome. 



THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD, 59 

But — we are surrounded by another order of exist- 
ence, so near to us, so present with us, that if our vision 
were clear, and our eyes were not holden, we should 
see Christ before us every moment. His voice sounds 
out to us across this great, tempest-tossed world-sea, as 
it did to the disciples of old, *' It is I : be not afraid ! " 
We need to set the great objects of faith constantly be- 
fore us at all times and make them also objects of our 
most prayerful regard. They are within our reach, and 
presently at hand — let us ever hold ourselves toward 
them in the attitude of faith. 



60 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



^f)e dFourti) Suntrag after W^t ©pip|)ang. 

THK PRECIOUSNKSS OF FAITH. 

W^z %tt^\i^ 3Epi5tU (H^tntral cf %\, f jeltr i. i. 

** Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have 
obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God 
and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'' 

In the Epistle to the Hebrews faith is defined as " The 
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen." And St. Paul says, '* We look not at the things 
which are seen, but at the things which are not seen : for 
the things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
which are not seen are eternal.^' Faith is the power of 
looking beyond the world of sense and time to the world 
that is invisible and eternal. 

This power, however, is not to be confounded with 
poetic fancy, by the exercise of which it is also possible, 
in a certain sense, to pass beyond the range of ordinary 
life and to communicate with things unseen and eternal. 
Faith differs from this in that it is an actual apprehension 
of the eternal and unseen as being presently at hand, the 
very '^substance of things hoped for." Such a power as 
this can be exercised only when the objects themselves 
are felt to be at hand in their own proper nature. Faith 
is felt, in the very beginning of it, to have direct reference 
to these objects, and can have no existence at all apart 
from them. By the objects of faith we are to understand, 
in a word, divine revelation. Divine revelation is one, 
though it may be considered as being made up of many 
different parts or factors, and faith may be regarded as 



THE PRECIOUSNESS OF FAITH, 61 

being exercised toward these different parts. In this 
way the faith of the Old Testament saints is one with the 
faith of the New Testament saints. The ultimate object 
of faith is the New Testament revelation — the Word of 
God revealed in full in the person of Christ. Faith, in 
its full evangelical sense, is strictly conditioned by this 
object. It cannot exist without it, just as the eye cannot 
exist without the light by which its activity is condi- 
tioned. Faith is exercised in the element of this invisible 
world of revelation, and depends on the presence of the 
object itself under which the revelation becomes com- 
plete. *'This is the work of God, that ye believe on him 
whom he hath sent." '' This is eternal life that they 
might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom thou hast sent.'' There is no room even to con- 
ceive of faith apart from the person of Christ. This is 
the kind of faith we find in the Apostles' Creed, and in 
all the ancient creeds. The exercise of faith that is called 
for in the Creed is not ^theological reflection, but is an 
activity of mind on the part of the believer which lays 
hold of this great object, Christ, frpm whom all the arti- 
cles of the Creed flow forth. Our belief in Christ, as ex- 
pressed in the Apostles' Creed, is based upon this self- 
authenticating power. Just as objects in the natural 
world impress themselves upon us by their own presence, 
through the medium of light, so is it here. 

Under this view, faith is seen to be something truly 
great. For, how does it come ? St. Peter addresses his 
epistle '' To them that have obtained like precious faith 
with us through the righteousness of God and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ.'^ According to what has just now 
been said, faith is an activity of the human mind or spirit; 
just as much so as is imagination or intelligence. It does 



62 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

not belong to, cannot be conferred upon a man in an out- 
ward way, and is not to be regarded as anything magical. 
There must be a necessity and ground for it in the 
original constitution of the soul itself; otherwise we could 
not at all attain to it. '^ There is a spirit in man, and the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." 
The ground of faith, as an activity of the mind or spirit, 
rests in the original constitution of man. There is an 
affinity of our spirits with the Divine Spirit, and with the 
invisible world ; there is a power in us by which the soul 
of man reaches out beyond time and sense to things that 
are spiritual and eternal. This is an original prerogative 
of our nature. Yet, at the same time the exercise of this 
power depends on the presence and influence of the Spirit 
of God. Revelation does not create faith, nor insert it 
into the soul as if it had not been there before. It is in 
the mind constitutionally as a possibility. As is said in 
the passage above quoted from the book of Job, " There 
is a spirit in man ;" but it is also added, ^' and the inspira- 
tion of the Almighty giveth them understanding.'' The 
Holy Spirit must and does work on the minds of men ; 
He broods over them, as on creation's morn He '' moved 
upon the face of the waters," bringing order out of chaos, 
and unfolding the possibilities of the human spirit. In 
this way this original possibility of faith becomes, under 
the operation of the Holy Ghost, the power of looking 
at '* things that are not seen and eternal." 

So much, then, is involved in the Apostle's words, ''To 
them that have obtained like precious faith " through 
God and Christ. To them the divine lot has fallen to 
have this capacity for apprehending heavenly realities 
brought forth and developed by being operated upon 
from above and beyond. In the text it is worthy of 



THE PRECIOUSNESS OF FAITH, 63 

being observed that faith is not regarded as something 
self-produced, but as depending continually on the opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit. 

Furthermore, this faith is set before us as something 
exceedingly '' precious," valuable. It deserves to be con- 
sidered in an eminent degree. ^' To them that have ob- 
tained like precious faith." What else is there in all the 
world so truly precious as faith? There is nothing of 
such vital and fundamental account. Its character of 
preciousness suggests its rarity and difficulty of attain- 
ment, for these are the peculiar characteristics of that 
which is precious universally. Faith is something rare, 
although it has its ground and possibility in every human 
soul. Nor is it hard to understand how or why the 
attainment of faith is something difficult ; for although it 
is one of the deepest powers or principles of the mind, 
yet it has been overlaid or held in bondage by a more 
superficial nature which has to do directly with the mate- 
rial world — with things that are ^t^n and temporal — and 
all this, as we know, by reason of the fall of man from 
that state in which he was originally created. The things 
of this world so take the attention and so absorb the in- 
terest of the soul, that this deeper power of apprehending 
higher things is prevented from being exercised, the 
natural crowding out the spiritual, and the temporal 
allowing no room for the eternal. The world of nature 
and sense, by which we are made to fall a prey to natural 
appetites, stands fearfully in the way of deeper instincts. 
It is a weight by which our minds are dragged down to 
the earth — a force bending and binding us to the vanities 
of the world. 

In this respect faith is something rare. The great 
majority of men are occupied almost exclusively with 



64 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

the world of sense, and if their attention is directed to 
anything higher, it is only in the way of thought. But 
it is not enough to communicate with a higher world 
only in the way of thought. Such a communication is, 
after all, only by fancy ; and it is because of the uni- 
versal tendency in this direction that faith is hard to pro- 
duce, and difficult to maintain. When St. Paul says ot 
himself that he looked not on things seen and temporal 
but on things unseen and eternal, he unconsciously pre- 
sents in his own person one of the most sublime spectacles 
on which it is possible for us to fix our gaze. A man 
that is in the world, and is surrounded by the things of 
the world, and yet has power to look beyond all, to things 
unseen and eternal, presents the highest exhibition of 
human virtue. 

Faith is difficult not only in the way we have men- 
tioned, but also and furthermore from the faithless 
atmosphere prevailing in the world. There is a lack ot 
incentive to its exercise in our entire surroundings. If 
society were universally governed by christian principle, 
it would not seem so hard for men to exercise faith. But 
the very opposite of this is the case. The world of mo- 
rality by which men are commonly governed is led away 
captive by the presence and power of material things. 
This is the case in art, science, culture; the whole social 
and political world revolves in the orbit of that which is 
seen and temporal. Of themselves, and by their own 
power, none of these ever get beyond this narrow scope, 
nor ever rise to the apprehension of a higher life. In the 
exercise of faith, then, what disadvantages are we not 
called upon to sustain ! We are challenged to keep in 
exercise that faculty or power of the soul which the whole 
world around us is calculated to deaden, if not indeed to 



THE PRECIOUSNESS OF FAITH. - 65 

destroy. In these circumstances faith is necessarily dif- 
ficult. It is the property of only a few. And even 
amongst those who profess Christ there are still only 
comparatively few who do possess it in its proper fulness 
and power. It was with reference to this downward 
tendency of the human spirit that our Saviour said, 
'' When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on 
the earth ?" When, in His glorious second advent, He 
shall break in upon the present order of things, and come 
forth suddenly presented to the minds of men, shall He 
find any reasonable number of them in the possession of 
this mighty power of faith ? Well may the Apostle con- 
gratulate those to whom this epistle was written, in the 
language of the text ! 

The preciousness of faith appears when we consider its 
intrinsic value. If it were possessed by all men, it would 
lose none of its great value. We need not dwell at 
length on this point. As soon as we come to see what 
faith obtains for us, and what a power it is in the soul of 
man, we need no further argument to convince us of its 
importance. How much there is, at many places, in 
God's word exhorting to its exercise and descriptive of 
its exceeding excellence. Even in the Old Testament 
we find much of this, as in the book of Proverbs, for ex- 
ample, where the writer dwells at length and frequently 
upon the blessedness of wisdom — words which may well 
be applied to faith ; for the faith of the New Testament 
is, in meaning, synonymous with the wisdom of the 
Old — '' Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the 
man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise 
of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the 
gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than 
rubies, and all the things that thou canst desire are not 

5 



6ft COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. V 

to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right 
hand ; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways 
are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." 

It would be easy to show that faith is the highest form 
of intelligence. When once compared with this power 
of the soul, all other activities whatsoever are seen to 
be poor, mean and weak. What illumination of the 
mind, for instance, may for a single moment be compared 
with that high enlightenment which comes through that 
faith by which we see light in God's light ? If, in this 
way, *^ thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full 
of light : but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall 
be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in 
thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ! " If we 
look at the case properly, we shall see that the most 
strenuous exercise of thought is as nothing when com- 
pared with the illumination of faith. Without that, there 
is but little difference between the philosopher and the 
fool. In truth, the highest kind of spiritual activity is 
that which is involved in the act of faith. Faith enlarges 
the mind far beyond any other kind of knowledge or 
science. It involves a wide freedom to which the spirit 
of man cannot be introduced in any other way. It arms 
the very life of a man with the strongest weapons, and 
inspires him with the most invincible courage. Should 
we compare all physical and intellectual powers with the 
power of faith, we should find that while the former 
plant themselves, as it were, on a created fulcrum, the 
latter rests upon the living God. 

Faith grounds itself in God. The subject comes to 
have part in His Kingdom. Faith is the power of mir- 
acles, in the Old Testament and in the New. The power 
of faith is expressed by St. John where he says, *' This 



THE PRECIOUSNESS OF FAITH, 67 

is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." 
It is a power that exceeds all other powers in the world. 
And the very essence of man's dignity consists in his 
having the world under him. All acquisition of wealth 
and power, what is it, but an evidence that men instinc- 
tively are seeking for the mastery of the world, blindly 
feeling after this mighty power of faith. They cannot 
help themselves — they are instinctively driven to it. 
This is the problem with which the world in its fallen 
state is wrestling. The Apostle says, '' This is the vic- 
tory that overcometh the world, even our faith '' — that is, 
faith in the person of Christ, and in nothing else; because 
in Him alone the powers of the world are overcome. 

*' Who is he that overcometh the world ? " This is a 
question which challenges all for an answer, the philoso- 
pher, the politician, the men of natural science, and of 
all the arts. Who is he ? It is none other than '^ He that 
believeth that Jesus is the Son of God." Nothing more 
than this is needed to bring home the significance of the 
congratulation contained in the text. Sir Humphrey 
Davy, a most distinguished man of Science, at the close 
of his life, said, '* I ^nvy no man the gift of beauty, 
honor or power: but if there be one thing I value above 
all else, it is the gift of faith." This is the testimony of 
a man most learned in his department. 

Is this power in us ? If it is, then we should neglect 
no opportunity for the cultivation and development of it. 
It is indeed the gift of God, in the sense that it is possible 
only in view of what God has done and has given in 
the Gospel. The development of this principle or power 
depends upon the presence of the object with which it is 
employed. This is so not only with faith — it is the same 
with all our faculties and powers. The eye cannot be 



68 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, V 

strengthened without the presence of the light. All 
the bodily senses are awakened^ developed, strengthened 
only by the objects with which they are intended to deal. 
Such is the relation between the inward and the outward 
everywhere in our lives. And this law holds good pre- 
eminently in our relation to the world that is unseen and 
eternal. If we think not of '' those things that are 
above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God ; " 
if we do not keep them in mind, if we have not at all to 
do with them, but are led away continually by the things 
of this transitory and perishable world, how can this power 
of faith, so pricelessly precious as we have seen it to be, 
ever arise in our souls, how can it ever grow strong and 
great? We can require our minds to look at these 
things ; these things are at hand for us, being brought 
nigh to us in the Gospel : we have power to come under 
their gracious influence. Setting before ourselves Jesus 
Christ, meditating upon Him, His character and mighty 
works, we shall be excited to faith, and faith will thereby 
be established in our souls. So the Apostle exhorts us, 
** Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth 
so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race 

that is set before us" But this exertion on our 

part, this exercise of our own subjective powers is not by 
itself sufficient. There must be something more. Hence 

the Apostle goes on immediately to add," *' looking 

unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for 
the joy that was set before him endured the cross, 
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand 
of the throne of God. For consider him who endured 
such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be 
wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet re- 
sisted unto blood, striving against sin." 

yanuary jOy 1870. 



JESUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR, 69 



^%t ^\xx\} 5unliag after Cf)e ©pipfiang. 

JKSUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR. 

3of)n i. 51. 

^^ And He saith unto them, Verily , verily I say tint you ^ Hereafter ye shall 
see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the 
Son of Man J' 

This text occurs in connection with the call of Philip 
and Nathanael. Nathanael having expressed surprise at 
our Saviour's most intimate knowledge of him, our 
Saviour replied, ^' Because I said unto thee, I saw thee 
under the fig tree, believest thou ? Thou shalt see greater 
things than these/' Then follows the text. 

There is here an allusion undoubtedly to the vision 
which occurred to Jacob at Bethel, on his way to Padan- 
Aram, when he beheld the ladder set up on the earth, 
the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God 
ascending and descending on it ; which was undoubtedly 
a symbol and pledge of that communication between 
earth and heaven which God was pleased to establish in 
the way of grace^ beginning with the promises in patri- 
archal times, and being finally completed in the Incarna- 
tion ; '' Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the 
angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of 
Man." 

These words, of course, imply that outside of this com- 
munion of grace, there always is and must be a chasm 
between God and man ; a chasm which cannot be bridged 
over in any other way, being the result of sin, by which 
man is estranged from God. By reason of sin, God is 



70 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

turned away from man, His love turning into wrath. 
This fact of estrangement between the two is certified and 
made known not simply by the testimony of God's rev- 
elation to men, but also by the universal experience of 
men themselves, who everywhere and in every age in- 
stinctively feel and know that they are not in right rela- 
tion to God. Whether men are conscious of it or not, 
the great problem of humanity has always been the 
bridging over of this deep, dark, and awful chasm of sep- 
aration, in order to secure not only the hope of immor- 
tality, but also a present sense of peace. In all ages of 
the world men have endeavored to solve this problem. 
These endeavors have been all in vain. No man, philos- 
opher, statesman or poet, has ever been able to bridge 
this chasm over. For it affects the whole world of na- 
ture, which in its own measure has suffered from the fall ; 
and as nature finds its completion in man, there can be 
no separation between man and God, that does not also 
involve, or draw along with it, a separation between the 
natural and the supernatural worlds. The supernatural 
world — that world in which God dwells, and in which 
alone the true happiness of men can be found — from this 
we are so separated that by no human power whatever 
can we again attain to it. And yet, created life cannot be full 
and free, cannot at all attain to its proper end and aim 
without standing in direct communication with "the 
Father of lights, with whom is neither variableness nor 
shadow of turning." 

The one great question for the world, then, is the solu- 
tion to the problem of the relation between God and man, 
the bridging over of this chasm, the constituting of a 
proper living communion and fellowship between our 
spirits and the Father of spirits. So long as our nature 



JESUS THE ONE Y MEDIA TOR, 71 

is in this respect unsatisfied, we can find no rest or peace. 
And in view of this it is that our Saviour says, '^ Here- 
after ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God as- 
cending and descending on the Son of Man, " — that is 
to say, during my ministry in the world, and in the his- 
tory of the Church. '' The angels of God " here repre- 
sent the idea of full communication — '* angels ascending '^ 
that is, bearing upward to God the thoughts, feelings, 
prayers of men : '' Angels descending," that is, bringing 
down to men the rewards of righteousness in the way of 
spiritual illumination, of spiritual power to overcome the 
world, and to gain the victory over our present fallen 
state. All this is to be brought to pass through the min- 
istry of the angels. We cannot at all explain that min- 
istry. It is enough to know that it has an accredited 
place in the economy of salvation. The writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks of the ministry of the 
angels ; in the first chapter of that Epistle, and particu- 
larly in the last verse, where he says, '' Are they not all 
ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who 
shall be heirs of salvation ? '' And our Saviour here 
says, '^ Hereafter ye shall see the angels of God " — not 
so much with the outward eye, although the seeing of 
the angels did even extend to that, when Christ was in 
the flesh; but more especially '' ye shall see " with the 
inward eye of the spirit, by an apprehension of faith. 
In this way pre-eminently men were to see and know that 
the way of communication between heaven and earth was 
for them open, through the Son of Man. 

Here it is most important to observe that this 
whole new order of grace, thus established, was and is 
still confined to the person of the Son of Man. This 
title, " The Son of Man," is made much of by our Sav- 



72 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, \ 

iour, and has a special and a most profound significance. 
He is '^ The Son of God/' indeed, and yet also and at 
the same time " The Son of Man '^ ; and it is in virtue of 
this latter close relationship to our humanity that our 
salvation is rendered possible. He was a man like unto 
us : bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh ; '' conceived by 
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." This title, 
*' The Son of Man,'^ is a designation conveying a deep 
meaning. It involves the conception of a central, funda- 
mental relation to our human life, such as belongs to no 
other man, not even to the greatest hero in all the 
world, but only to The Man, Jesus of Nazareth. Our 
Saviour always had a striking and mysterious way of as- 
suming to Himself this central position, and of claiming 
the full force and significance of it. All other persons He 
claimed must surround Him, in the way of faith, and 
love, and truth. This central position of Christ reaches 
further and deeper even than did the analogous relation 
in which Adam stood. Christ is '* The Son of Man," 
and as such He is ^' the first-born of every creature,^' in 
a most profound sense, as He is also '^ the first-born 
from the dead." He is the source of life and immortality, 
brought to pass by a struggle with sin, death and hell. 
It is in this light that His relation to humanity comes 
fairly into view, and His title, '' The Son of Man,'' is 
seen to be full of meaning. '^ Ye shall see the angels of 
God ascending and descending " — not on others or on 
the life of the race at large. This latter is the view taken 
by many ; it is the favorite interpretation put upon this 
text by humanitarianism in every age, the supposition 
being that a communication had now been opened up 
between heaven and the whole human family in a general 
way. Neither did the angels of God descend on the 



JESUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR. 73 

philosophers and heroes in ancient times, nor will they 
do so now. Though vast and glorious is their work, it 
is yet not on them that the angels descend. There is a 
sense indeed in which the heroes of the world may be 
said to resemble Christ, namely in respect of that central 
position which He occupied relatively to the family of 
man. This central position, occupied by certain great 
and representative men in various stages of history, is 
the result of the operation of a universal law, according 
to which men cannot find their true completion in them- 
selves in a solitary or isolated way, but are constitution- 
ally constrained to seek their completion in clustering 
around certain central personalities. Such central per- 
sons comprehend in themselves a life wider than their 
own ; they are caught up, as it were, into a higher 
sphere. We see that law exemplified everywhere, the 
circles of personal complementation becoming wider and 
wider in the onflowing stream of our human life. In the 
large circles, the central persons are the great heroes 
of our humanity in the world of science, politics, philan- 
thropy, etc. 

Now, there is an analogy between the position occu- 
pied by such persons and that grand central position 
which only Christ fills in reference to the entire family 
of man. And this brings into view the fact that the 
quickening power of humanity which they radiate, comes 
not from below but from above. Central men assume 
this position not as the result of thought and reflection, 
and deliberation on their part, but because they constitu- 
tionally gather up into themselves the sense and mean- 
ing of other lives, and actualize it. And when such men 
do actualize the otherwise inexpressible significance of 
other lives of which they are the representatives, there is 



74 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

such a force brought to bear upon them from beyond them- 
selves, as that it is a kind of inspiration from the very- 
bosom of eternity. They become inspired ; in a deep 
sense of the word they are prophets. 

This is true of all who become truly great among men. 
It is true of every revelation of the truth. But in every 
case the force, the power which utters itself in and 
through such representative men, does not come from 
the multitude, but through the representative personality 
front beyond. This is an interesting analogy, forasmuch 
as it beautifully illustrates the entire naturalness of our 
Saviour's central position in the circle of our humanity 
as '' the Son of Man." 

To return, however, to the point in question, we say 
that in the history of the past ages we do not find the 
highest powers of humanity — powers on which the re- 
demption of the world depends — powers which come 
from heaven — we do not, I say, find these powers de- 
scending on any except on Christ. Important as men in 
their several spheres may be, they have yet no redeem- 
ing power. Just now, more than any other time, art, 
science, politics are in danger of losing sight of the true 
character of the Gospel by reducing it to a mere human- 
itarian agency. But Christ says, " Ye shall see heaven 
open, and the angels of God ascending and descending " 
— where ? " On the Son of Man ! '' and nowhere else. 
One man is capable of representing some particular form 
of our life, but Christ was a leader and a representative, 
not only of one age, but of all ages. It is not possible 
that any hero — even the very greatest — whose inspiration 
is of necessity partial and relative, can be the medium of 
full and absolute communion with the spiritual world. 
In order that any one may have such a position, divinity 



JESUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR, 75 

must be joined to humanity. Such a person must in- 
deed be '* conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the 
Virgin Mary." 

This we have in our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who is both 
the Son of God and the Son of Man. '' Hereafter ye 
shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending 
and descending on the Son of Man." How all this is to 
be brought to pass it is not necessary now to set forth, 
for this would carry us through the whole range of the 
gospel. But we can see, now, that our Saviour's person, 
being such as to unite the human and the divine natures, 
the chasm between God and Man, of which we have been 
speaking, is now in Him bridged over, and only in Him. 
Only here have we the root and ground of our redemp- 
tion. '' Hereafter ye shall see heaven open " — the disci- 
ples saw this during the time of His earthly ministry — 
saw it in all the works which constitute His continual 
Epiphany — saw it in His baptism, when the Holy Ghost 
descended on Him in the form of a dove — saw it, in 
brief, from this time forward to the time of His cruci- 
fixion. His miracles were wrought before them. It is 
true, miracles were wrought in the Old Testament by 
the power of God, but they evidently had reference to 
the miracles wrought by Christ. Christ Himself may 
be said to be the great miracle of all miracles. We can- 
not at all believe in the New Testament miracles with a 
true christian faith, except as that faith is conditioned 
upon a living faith in Christ Himself. No number of 
miracles could have been sufficient to authenticate the 
divine mission of our Saviour, apart from His own per- 
son. These miracles were so many verifications of His 
divinity, and of the descent of the angels of God on the 
Son of Man. '' Hereafter ye shall see the angels of God 



76 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, \ 

descending/' was the promise of the Saviour at the open- 
ing of His ministry ; and they did see it. They saw it 
in the water made wine, they saw it in the healing of the 
lepers and of the nobleman's son, they saw it in the 
power displayed by Him in walking on the sea, and in 
calling the dead to life; and those who were with Him 
on that occasion saw it pre-eminently in His transfigura- 
tion. These were only glimpses, however, of the power 
and majesty which abode continually in His person. 
Thus were the angels of God ascending and descending 
on Him, and this fact His followers could not help but 
see and feel when they were brought near to Him in 
spirit. They saw it in His words as well as in His works, 
and were persuaded that '' never man spake like this 
man ; " and that His words were the " words of eternal 
life." And especially were they convinced of it by His 
resurrection and ascension, and by the descent of the 
Holy Ghost, who came upon them with even outward 
signs and wonders. 

And this has been the experience of christians in all 
ages since. Christ alone has power to bring us into 
communion with the higher world. The christian sys- 
tem thus possesses a power far beyond any dreamed of 
by the pagan world, in solving the great problem or rid- 
dle of our humanity. Did time permit^ we might show 
how all true illumination for the world must come in the 
way indicated in the text. The light of the nineteenth 
century, of which so much is said nowaday, how poor 
and mean it is, after all, when set over against that great 
flood of light which comes from the gospel of our Sav- 
iour! By Him alone is the chasm bridged over. "There 
is none other name under heaven given among men 
whereby we must be saved." 



JESUS THE ONLY MEDIATOR. 77 

Here, in conclusion, I wish to commend to your con- 
stant consideration the thought that this is the highest end 
of existence. Here there is offered for your acceptance a 
power over sin, both on the theoretical side of the reason, 
and also on the practical side of the will. The completion 
of our being must be brought about by a power strictly 
supernatural. The great and alarming danger of our age 
is humanitarianism — a seeking after the completion of our 
life and the removal of the evils which afflict the world, 
to be brought about by the operation of laws, forces, 
powers, agencies resident in humanity as such. The 
pleasing dream of men's souls now is that society is to 
be born again — not from above, but from beneath — not 
by the grace of the gospel, but by the illumination of 
science and art. But if these powers of man be trusted 
instead of the power of the gospel, to bridge over the 
wide gulf between God and man, they will invariably be 
found a mere spider's web. The ruin is far too wide 
and deep to be reached in any such way. 

If there be one truth perfectly clear, it is that salvation 
comes from above, and that in the most fully supernatural 
manner. Why else did the Word become incarnate ? or 
why does Christ so frequently, over and over again, pro- 
claim Himself the source of life ? Why does He say, 
'^ No man knoweth the Father save the Son," and again, 
" No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came 
down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in 
heaven ? " This is the great problem with which heathen 
mythology wrestled, as we see in the story of Hercules, 
for instance, in which case the struggle was more in the 
way of an outward conflict, whereas in the case of others 
in the heathen mythology it was more inward and 
spiritual. 



78 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

In reference to this the Saviour says-^not merely, of 
course, in reference to the heathen prophets and law- 
givers, but to those of the Old Testament as well — " No 
man hath ascended up into heaven : " no man can as- 
cend ; no man shall hereafter ascend. No philosopher 
or poet has ever in this way climbed the heavens. '' No 
man hath ascended up into heaven ! " This is one of the 
grandest declarations of the whole Gospel. '' No man 
hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from 
heaven, even the Son of man" — not the Son of God 
— " which is in heaven." In this capacity He was glori- 
fied as the highest hero of our humanity, and in this 
character He commends Himself to our faith, even as He 
challenged the faith of His disciples of old. And it is in 
this sublime character, also, that He is commended to 
us, as He was to them, by '^the voice from the excellent 
glory " in His transfiguration on the mountain, and by 
the same voice at His baptism in the Jordan, " This is 
my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye 
Him." 

February by 1870. 



THE LA W OF SPIRITUAL VISION, 79 



C$e 5tini»ag fieftire Hent— (J^uinquagesima. 

THE IvAW OF SPIRITUAL VISION. 

ptatlfttto vi. 22-23. 

" The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be 
full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how 
great is that darkness / " 

We have here a familiar image to represent a great 
moral truth. The act of sight involves two sides of ex- 
istence which reciprocally condition each other. First : 
it cannot take place without the presence of light, and 
this is of an objective character. But^ secondly, the act 
of seeing depends on what is comprehended in the con- 
stitution of our own person ; that is, it is conditioned by 
the eye. Were there no light there could, of course, be 
no sight ; but, were there no eye, there could be no sight 
either. Without an eye wherewith to see, there can be 
no vision, no matter how much light may be at hand. 
If there be no eye, all light, however brilliant, is only 
darkness. 

The relation between the eye and* the light is not such 
that the eye becomes a mere passive agent for taking in 
the light. The eye could not at all apprehend or take in 
the light if there were not in it a character corresponding 
to the constitution of the light. The eye is in itself lu- 
miniferous, or, (if I may use the word) phosphorescent 
— that is to say, light-bearing, for the purposes of vision. 
We know that light may be produced by the eye itself 
When it is struck it emits light to itself. On closing 



80 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

the eye, after beholding some brilliant object, the eye of 
itself reproduces the light and the image of the object. 

There is too in light itself, considered as something 
objective, a corresponding pre-adaptation to the consti- 
tution of the eye. The meeting and mutual complemen- 
tation of these two activities, the one objective the other 
subjective, is what we call vision, or sight. It is no 
doubt in view of, and with a perfect understanding of 
this relation, that our Saviour says, ''The light of the 
body " — of the whole person, that is — *' is the eye." The 
light of the body is not the element at large which 
touches all the members of the body, but there is one 
organ, or member, which is the medium of its communi- 
cation to the entire body, namely, the eye. Through 
this organ it exerts its power and influence over the 
entire organism. In this way, light being mediated 
to the body by the eye, men may know the things 
around them, how to walk, how to work and act. Here, 
of course, the light is the condition, and all depends on 
the character of that member of the body which is the 
organ for its apprehension and communication. ''The 
light of the body is the eye — if, therefore, thine eye be 
single " — that is, answerable to the light ; if it have a 
light-bearing, a light-representing capacity and power, 
then ''the whole body is full of light.'' "But if thine 
eye be evil " — if it lack the power to respond to the out- 
ward element of the light ; if there be no correspondence 
between the two, no power in the eye to receive, to me- 
diate and interpret the light for the body as a whole — 
'' thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore 
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that 
darkness ! " For this state of things there is, of course, 
no remedy. 



THE LA W OF SPIRITUAL VISION, 81 

The goodness of the eye depends on its simplicity, or 
singleness. Only then will it well perform the high 
functions of its office. The eye that sees things in a 
confused way is not thus single, whole, sound^ efficient 
for the purposes of the organism, and will mediate dark- 
nesss instead of light. 

This is a simple and yet at the same time a very strik- 
ing image of a profound moral truth. There is a corre- 
spondence between the world of nature and the world of 
mind which renders such an image or figure most pro- 
foundly forcible. The correspondence is not accidental 
or simply external, but involves or is based upon an in- 
ward, constitutional relationship, and by virtue of such 
relationship things physical stand for and are commonly 
taken as symbols of things ethical and spiritual. Thus 
light stands for truth, and darkness for error. The 
relation between the two is not merely fanciful or con- 
ventional, as if this taking of natural things to represent 
moral truths were the result of arbitrary agreement. It 
rests upon something far deeper than that — upon an in- 
ner, organic, constitutional relationship. It is easy to 
see that there is an inner relation between seeing and 
thinking, for instance. All thinking begins in seeing ; 
in taking in the outward light and the images of outward 
objects in a way far different from that in which an ani- 
mal, for example, sees them, or takes them in ; for a 
man sees, not passively, but with the power of intellect- 
ual perception. We can see, in this way, how the exer- 
cise of this faculty of sight rises to the highest possible 
conception of the human reason. Seeing and thinking 
are closely related, as are also light and truth. 

The question arises, wherein consists the seeing of the 
mind ? To this different answers may be given. There 
6 



82 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

may be a lower or a higher seeing. You may say the 
eye of the soul begins to be exercised in intellectual per- 
ception, when by sensation the mind receives impres- 
sions from abroad and mentally reacts upon them, and 
in this way acquires knowledge of them. This is some- 
thing quite different from what is possible, in the act of 
seeing, to the animal nature. Animals do not look at 
objects as men do. In the human world seeing involves 
an intellectual as well as a physical act. The higher 
vision comes in through the medium of the lower. The 
apprehension on the part of the human spirit is not only 
a natural vision. It is more inward than this^ involving 
intelligence, and is something truly great, challenging 
our admiration when we compare it with sight as exer- 
cised by the lower orders of existence where conscious 
mind, or reason, does not exist ; and it would seem to 
some that this great power of intelligent apprehension is 
so great and high a power that by the pure and unaided 
exercise thereof man may hope to solve the problem of 
his existence ; and when such persons read this passage 
— "The light of the body is the eye" — they imagine that 
the reference is entirely to something intellectual and 
rational ; that it means that if your reason and intelli- 
gence are well developed, sound and whole, your whole 
being shall be full of light. There is, of course, much 
truth in this view ; but taken separately and by itself, it 
does not give us the full sense of the text. 

There is a sense in which the text applies in full, and 
that is when we are in proper sympathy with our Sa- 
viour. There are some who consider the single eye to 
mean conscience. If that be pure and single and sound, 
they say, then the whole body shall be full of light. 
This comes nearer to the truth, but still does not bring 



THE LA W OF SPIRITUAL VISION. 83 

it wholly into view. The full force and sense of the text 
we apprehend as coming into view only when we rise to 
the highest stage of intelligence in man, which we do 
not find in the reason, purely as such^ but in the will. 
In the reason we have a power which produces science ; 
but there is a higher power in man than even the rea- 
son, high indeed as that is — the will, which is the other 
side of our spiritual nature. We have the theoretical 
reason, the power of intelligence, the object of which is 
truth, science. Then we have the practical reason, the 
power of action — a power which is not merely able to 
follow out a course of action set before it, but a power of 
originating its own determination for itself It is the 
same reason both in the will and the understanding, of 
course, but in the understanding reason manifests itself 
in one way, in the will in another way. 

Now, this is what we are to understand by " The light 
of the body is the eye " — the highest sense of man's life 
as this makes itself felt in the depths of his own moral 
being, and causes him to regard one end only as the true 
end of existence. To such a "single eye^' all other ends 
and purposes must take a subordinate position. The 
understanding can propose an end, and set it before the 
will, and the will may follow it as supreme and control- 
ling. This end may be wealth, power, or some high, 
ambitious purpose ; but sooner or later such an end is 
found not to be the true end of existence, and there is 
then a want of singleness in the eye ; it sees double ; its 
images are misty and cloudy. The proposed end may 
be something high, glorious and great, yet if it be not 
that end which the nature of the will requires, it is not 
possible that the eye should be single. There is a sense 
of something wrong, something wanting for the proper 



84 • COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

completion of the existence. Only when the object pro- 
posed is in full harmony with the will of the Saviour can 
we have that singleness of the eye spoken of in the 
text. 

In all seeing, whether physical or intellectual, the im- 
portance of the objective element must not be over- 
looked. In the constitution of the human will it is nec- 
essary to know where the proper end of existence lies, as 
something objective and external first of all. This great 
end and purpose of life (upon which we cannot now 
dwell at length) is set before us, in a word, in the incar- 
nation of our Lord, and is the only proper object of our 
faith. It is evident that there can be no faith, which is 
the same as seeing — the two are really one and the same 
— no singleness of the eye, except by the presence of the 
Truth, as an objective power or element, acting upon us 
from without in the form of God's revelation. We can- 
not project our own notions of truth, as it were, out into 
an intellectual space, and then make them the objects of 
our vision or apprehension. The Truth must be at 
hand, not in the way of fancy or imagination or specula- 
tion, but actually present, as being the very presence of 
the Incarnate Word. '^This is the work of God," says 
Christ, not that you believe in the creations of your own 
fancy or reason, but that you believe in the great fact 
and mystery of the incarnation. There is no faith in 
theological speculation. There is none in any depart- 
ment of our intellectual life, except as the eye is directed 
to Jesus Christ. There is no growing in grace where 
experimental religion, as it is called, rests upon its own 
ever-varying states and frames of mind. Experimental 
religion, to be of the right kind, must be an abiding, 
constant communication with objective grace. 



THE LA W OF SPIRITUAL VISION. 85 

So much is included in the text — '^ If thine eye be 
single, thy whole body shall be full of light." How- 
could it be otherwise ? '' But^ if the light that is in thee be 
darkness, how great is that darkness ! " We can here at 
once see, according to this profound law of spiritual 
seeing, as laid down by our Saviour, what is the general 
cause of unbelief, wherever an honest infidelity exists. 
Such men are not able to satisfy themselves even of the 
truth of Christianity. The position of the infidel is a 
false position. What is his position ? Why, he affects 
to stand quite outside and independent of the whole 
world of grace — apart from Christ and Christianity — and 
seeks by an intellectual analysis to make them intelligible 
to himself. He will not place himself in position to 
allow these to authenticate themselves to him, and seeks 
to prove the higher truth by the lower. Because he can- 
not prove the sun by looking away from the sun, he 
denies that there is a sun. And yet he feels that he is 
an honest infidel ! Verily, he is to be pitied ! 

All truth, and especially all truth that is fundamental, 
must enter into a man in a practical way, or on the prac- 
tical side, on the side of the practical reason — the will — 
rather than on the side of the pure reason — the under- 
standing. To prove such a truth without experiencing 
and practicing it, is a contradiction, an impossibility. 
And yet that is the position of the infidel. Such a 
person needs to see that the highest form of our rational 
being is in the will, on the practical side, and not at all 
on the theoretical. The first and chief end of our being 
is that the will, not the understanding primarily, but the 
will, must be brought into harmony with the truth. 
Such is the relation between the objective and the sub- 
jective sides here, that the will never can be true to its 



86 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

own nature and constitution without apprehending- and 
sanctioning the highest form of all existence as we are 
confronted by it in the person of Jesus Christ. 

'* If any man will do His will '' — is willing to do His 
will — *^ he shall know of the doctrine." Two acts are 
involved here : first, the will to do, and secondly the doing. 
The two cannot be so separated as to have the one with- 
out the other. Furthermore, the knowing of the doctrine 
depends on the doing of His will. It is not possible 
that the knowledge of the Spirit can be reached in any 
other way. This shows infidelity to be unscientific and 
unphilosophical at once. The only way by which the 
faith can be established is by holding our will in full 
harmony with the divine will. This constitutes " the 
single eye" — the simplicity, wholeness, soundness of the 
will in its relation to the truth. By the exercise and 
use of this we have an unerring assurance of faith, and 
possess that singleness of the eye whereby our whole 
being, body, soul and spirit, shall be full of light. 

February ^7, i87o. 



HELP FROM ABOVE. 87 



W^t Ci&irt Suntrag in Uent. 

HELP FROM ABOVE. 

^jjalm 130, V. I. 

" Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." 

It is from these words of the Psalmist that the lan- 
guage of the collect for this day is taken, while at the 
same time they furnish the key-note for the proper 
understanding of both the Gospel and the Epistle Les- 
son. The collect reads thus — 

'' Almighty God, who hast been the hope and confidence 
of Thy people in all ages ; mercifully regard, we beseech 
Thee, the prayer with which we cry unto Thee out of the 
depths, and stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty for 
our salvation and defense, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. 
Ainen.'' 

The idea here expressed by the words '^ the depths," 
is that of great trial and sorrow. This may indeed be 
under a purely physical aspect, as in the suffering of pain 
in sickness or otherwise, but the moral and spiritual 
element is chief We feel that all pain is but the expres- 
sion of moral misery. So that in the language, " Out of 
the depths/' there is a plain reference to the common 
misery of our life superinduced by sin. 

There are in the image itself, here presented for our 
consideration, three conceptions — 

I. That of a fall. II. That of a feeling of despair — a 
feeling that the fall leaves us in a position whence we can- 
not escape by our own unaided powers, but that we are 



88 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

under the absolute necessity of looking up to powers 
above and beyond for help and deliverance. And III., 
The idea of deliverance from above ; deliverance not 
from the depths, but from a plane above and beyond 
them. These three conceptions enter into any moral 
pain into which men fall, but they have their full and 
proper signification only in view of man's spiritual fall. 
Under this view, the text forms the key-note of the les- 
sons for the day, and is a fine expression of the general 
spirit of the Lenten season considered as a whole. As 
we saw last Sunday, these lessons bring out the conflict 
between Christ and the world, beginning in the tempta- 
tion and ending in the victory on the cross. On the 
previous Sunday we saw the conflict of Christ with the 
kingdom of evil in the form of a single example : but 
in both the Scripture lessons and in the collect for this 
day we are referred to a conflict with the powers of evil 
under a wider and more general view. The whole 
world, especially as culminating in humanity, is here re- 
garded as lying in sin. The state in which the world is 
universally is not its ideal or original state. The whole 
world is fallen. Even the external world of nature may 
be regarded in one view as a falling away from the world 
of spirit. It is remote from God. It is only a shadow 
of the spiritual. The relation between the natural and 
the spiritual is such that we all feel that the natural 
depends on the spiritual. The more we look at the 
relation, and reflect upon it, the more clearly do we see 
that the natural is but a dark and shadowy reflection of 
the spiritual. Thus, time is only a shadow of eternity, 
and space a shadow of heaven. Heaven is not a mere 
continuation of our space existence. So also our whole 
time-life is a falling away from our higher, complete life 



HELP FROM ABOVE, . 89 

— and it would be so even had man not fallen. Were 
we not hindered by sin, we should feel and realize this 
more ; we should see that our life here is only a parable 
of that higher life : that this is not our home ; that here 
we cannot rest, nor find our satisfaction. Were our eyes 
not blinded thus by sin, we should see with infinitely 
greater clearness than we are now capable of, that the 
end of our being cannot be found in this world, that here 
we cannot rest. 

This being the general relation between heaven and 
earth in its normal character, we are prepared to see 
that our whole human life has fallen away from sublime 
heights, and is now lying helpless in the depths. That 
we are thus fallen from a nobler state we feel in our 
inmost consciousness. We have within us the feeling of 
something higher — a reminiscence, as some think, of a 
higher condition of the soul in a pre-existent state. But 
be that as it may, sin is plainly, and in the very concep- 
tion of it, a lapse from a higher element of existence to 
a lower. The existence of man is no longer held in 
proper connection with its ultimate ground. It has 
somehow experienced a fall, or lapse — as if an existence 
in the air, like that of a bird, should sink down out of 
its own native and necessary element, and be doomed to 
the earth, or sink into a still lower order in the water. 
Thus we conceive our present condition to be one of a 
lapse or fall from a higher element to a lower. 

We cannot at all account for such a lapse or fall. It 
antedates our exprience. We cannot get behind it, or 
reach above or beyond it in any way, so as to understand 
even the possibility of it. '' Sin entered into the world " 
— but how it did so we cannot explain. If we could 
understand it, it would be rational; if rational then 



90 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

necessary ; and if necessary, then it would not be sin. 
But sin is irrational, utterly, and for that reason sin is 
always represented in the Bible in a symbolical way, for 
in no other way could it be revealed to us, nor in any 
other way could we at all understand it It is transcen- 
dental to our present order of existence ; does not at all 
fall within the scope of our existence. Only in this view 
of the case do we reach the full force and significance of 
the fall, as being not a letting-down from one plane of 
existence to another, but an absolute and total fall from 
one element of existence down into another, which 
latter has now become a nature to us. This is what we 
mean by '^ original sin," which it is always necessary to 
recognize in order that room may be properly made for 
the work of redemption. 

In these circumstances, our life, thus separated and 
fallen from God, comes under the dominion of Satan. 
The world, as fallen, is under the dominion of evil. The 
fall is an organic ruin, and the redemption from the fall 
must be an organic redemption. 

We have this thought presented in the Gospel Lesson 
for the day. Christ was casting out a devil. His 
enemies said, " He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, 
the chief of the devils." Even they recognized the 
world as being in some way under the power of the 
devil. They had no proper conception, however, of the 
nature either of the devil or of sin. Their declaration 
that one could '^ cast out devils by the chief of the 
devils '^ is in full line with the humanitarian view, that 
our fallen humanity carries in its own bosom the remedy 
for its malady. That is a very false, though a very com- 
mon view. The world is full of it. Science, art, com- 
merce, political economy — these are forever dreaming 



HELP FROM ABOVE. 91 

of raising man heavenward by his own inherent powers. 
As over against this, we find in the Scripture lessons 
assigned for our reading and meditation to-day, an 
enforcing of the great truth, that a new Power has 
actually entered into this our fallen world from above 
and beyond it, by which alone redemption is possible. 
Men in our Saviour's day were slow to see the great 
fact, that '' The Kingdom of God is come upon you : '' 
that there was an actual historical conflict on the part of 
Christ with Satan, and a victory over him, in man's 
behalf and by The Son of Man. We have here, in the 
Gospel Lesson, a declaration of our Saviour's that He 
bringing in the Kingdom of God introduces into the 
world a Kingdom mightier than that of Satan — that He 
Himself is the stronger Man who will ''take from Satan 
all his armour wherein he trusted, and will divide his 
spoils." 

Then again, with reference to the general thought that 
nothing short of a new and higher power from above and 
beyond can ever redeem men, our Lord says, ''When the 
unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry 
places, seeking rest ; and finding none, he saith, I will re- 
turn unto my house whence I came out. And when he 
cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished." Here the 
man, thus newly delivered from evil, is represented as 
being only what he was before ; there has been no change 
in the spiritual nature. Humanitarianism, at its best 
estate, can only drive out the unclean spirit, so to speak 
(if indeed it can do so much as that), and leaves the man 
much as he was before. His house is " swept and gar- 
nished," and there is an outward show of amendm.ent, 
but no thorough-going, radical change in the inmost 
sanctuary of the man's soul. " Then goeth he, and taketh 



92 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself: and 
they enter in and dwell there ; and the last state of that 
man is worse than the first." That is a striking symbol- 
ical representation of the great truth, that cannot be too 
much insisted upon, that there is no help for our fallen 
humanity from within the bosom of humanity itself. All 
remedial efforts in the way of art, science, literature, 
and so forth, must always fail as they always have failed 
in the past. Though they may even appear for a time to 
have done good, yet the misery soon comes back again. 
There has been no relief for our fallen life by civilization, 
culture, law, politics. These have no power to lift man 
up and out of his fall. He is in the depths and cannot 
find his way out by his own power. 

*' And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a cer- 
woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto 
him : Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps 
which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, 
blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep 
it '' — as much as to say : There has come among men a 
mighty power from above, even The Word of God, to 
help and to save. Blessed indeed are they that hear 
that Word. 

Such, then, is the general nature of the fall as set forth 
in the Gospel Lesson, which seems to gather up into it- 
self the voice out of the abyss into which humanity is 
fallen, and which is well expressed in the words of the 
Psalmist, '' Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O 
Lord." Similarly the collect is a cry of absolute despair 
of all other help from any other source whatsoever. 
There is in the human spirit constitutionally a nisus, a 
struggle after help. We cry out for help. We cannot 
avoid the feeling that this is not our home ; nor can we 



HELP FROM ABO VE. 93 

fail to be sensible of the nothingness and vanity of this 
our time-existence as over against that ideal existence a 
conviction of which we carry in our own consciousness, 
and toward which we are impelled to struggle evermore. 
And just so far as this is truly felt, so far do we become 
persuaded of the utter ineffectualness of all human reme- 
dies and resources. A man will not cry out of the depths 
unless he is in absolute extremity. 

In such circumstances a cry for help from above must 
and does involve a measure of faith. In proportion pre- 
cisely as we feel our extremity, we turn to something 
greater and higher than ourselves, to something entirely 
above and beyond ourselves. What that something is 
we all very well know. God in Christ has come nigh 
unto us for our salvation and our help. And this ap- 
proach of God to us is only in Christ. Hence it is that 
the collect presents this help as coming to us in the way 
of an organic redemption in the person of Christ, the lan- 
guage of the prayer being that God would mercifully 
" stretch forth the right hand of His Majesty for our sal- 
vation and defense, through Jesus Christ our Lord!' If it 
were not under that character that redemption came into 
the world, it would be of no avail. The actual descent 
of a higher life into our fallen life is necessary for our 
salvation. *' No man hath ascended up to heaven, but 
he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man 
which is in heaven." If there was to be an ascension for 
our poor fallen humanity, there must first of all be a de- 
scension of the Son of Man into the very bosom of it. 
The relation between the two is not arbitrary but neces- 
sary. We can see the operation of that law even in the 
world of nature, where each lower system is universally 
suspended and dependent upon systems and powers 



94 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

above. What would Christ after all have been for us, 
what could He have been for us, had He been only a 
man ? Had He been so He would not have been '' The 
strong Man " attacking Satan and overcoming him. 

All this, now, is -involved in that cry of faith out of 
the depths. And in this way, by such an exercise of 
faith in the mighty Deliverer, we are brought to an actual 
part and participation in a real victory over Satan. We 
are to be delivered, not merely from disease and the other 
sure consequences of sin, but first of all from our nature 
of sin. Men talk of the new birth — but what does this 
mean if not the actual insertion of the subject into the 
very life of Christ ? This translation into Christ is a lift- 
ing up of the soul out of this fallen element into a higher 
element. This is a transcendental act, as was the intro- 
duction of sin into the world, and the fall. The feeling 
of such a translation of our fallen life into a higher sphere 
was very strong, evidently, in the early Church, and was 
very beautifully represented by the symbol of a fish, 
which symbol was no doubt originally suggested by the 
declaration of our Lord that He would make His disciples 
" Fishers of Men." No other symbol was more generally 
known, or more universally esteemed in the early 
Church, than this, excepting the cross, the primitive 
Christians seeing in the letters composing the Greek 
name for a fish a very beautiful signification. To their 
mind it seemed that even as a fish is raised out of the 
cold dark element of the water into the clear, warm ele- 
ment of the air, even so are we in Christ raised up to a 
new and higher life. This symbol may, indeed, strike 
some as absurd, forasmuch as they see not the force of 
the fall of man. 

The practical use of these reflections is plain enough, 



HELP FR OM AB O VE. 95 

and is well brought out in the Epistle Lesson. If we 
have been thus raised out of the depths, we are to live in 
a manner answerable to this new and higher life. We 
are to be '' followers of God, as dear children, and to walk 
in love, as Christ also hath loved us." The peculiarity 
of the Gospel and Epistle exhortations against sin is this, 
that they proceed upon the presupposition of an actual 
order of new life into which believers are regarded as 
having been raised. Those who were in that lower dark 
order are now in the higher. Nothing is said of their 
experience. They have passed over into the kingdom of 
light, and they are evermore to walk worthy of the ex- 
alted position they have been permitted, by the grace of 
God, to occupy. 

March j^, 1872. 



96 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 



THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR. 

^robniis xiii. 15. 

" The way of transgressors is hard'* 

The way of transgressors is hard because it is a 
wrong way, and one that is injurious to others as well as 
to the transgressor himself: and the text may have ref- 
erence to this latter aspect of the case. Transgression 
sooner or later is followed by a sense of contradiction and 
conflict with the regularly constituted order of things, 
and must eventually be attended with pain and suffering. 

It is easy enough to see that the way of trangression 
is hard for the sinner himself, even though it may be 
difficult at first to see how that way should involve hard- 
ship for others. It is clear that the sinner must suffer ; 
it is clear from the very nature of transgression. Trans- 
gression is a going beyond the mark, an exceeding of 
the boundaries by which the proper conception of life is 
defined and limited. The root conception of it is a going 
beyond the mark*, a going astray from the right. All 
such excess and transgression must be visited with 
penalty. It is as if a man on a journey, or going from 
place to place, proposes some point to himself, and then 
wanders out of the way, goes into fields and forests. 
Such a man of necessity will lose much valuable time, 
will make the way hard for himself, will find his journey 
attended with difficulty, and will ultimately fail of reach- 
ing his desired end. 



THE WA V OF THE TRANSGRESSOR, 97 

Just SO it is in the moral world. To go out of the way 
is at once to be involved in difficulty, hardship and 
pain. We are shut up to this conclusion so soon as we 
admit that there is a divine order of things in the world 
at all. Any violation of that order must bring pain. 
The hardness of the sinner's way thus comes into view 
when we see that the transgressor sets himself in con- 
tradiction 'both to the purpose of his own life and the 
purpose of the life of the world around him. 

The way of the transgressor is hard, not only because 
he must eventually suffer, when society, or violated law, 
takes vengeance on him for his transgression, it may be 
many years after the sin was done. That is true ; but 
there is something more than that. His punishment 
begins from the very moment of his transgression. He 
can^t escape the sense of violation and contradiction from 
the very outstart. His way is hard from the beginning 
to the end. That is what we mean by conscience — a 
voice, or power within the man pronouncing condemna- 
tion upon him. So long as he is involved in transgres- 
sion his way must be hard. His condition is that of the 
wicked, who are '^ like the troubled sea, when it cannot 
rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no 
peace, saith my God, to the wicked.^' 

This connects itself with the further thought, that the 
way of the transgressor comes into contradiction and 
conflict with the consciences and the lives of men around 
him, all of whom stand in one common moral life, not by 
any consent or conventionality, or agreement on their 
part, but by constitutional necessity underlying the whole 
social economy. Any trangression or violation of the 
moral law thus constitutionally involved, must be fol- 
lowed by punishment. Public sentiment will not be slow 
7 



98 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

to resent the wrong, and to punish the wrong-doer. So 
long as the transgressor lives in society he must suffer 
hardship and pain. His suffering may arise merely 
from the feeling that his neighbor condemns him, or that 
the general public opinion does so, or it may result from 
a sentence formally pronounced by the civil law. This 
social system we see at work everywhere guarding 
against transgression, and everywhere making the way 
of transgressors hard. 

But the misery does not end here. The moral grounds 
itself always in the physical. Both systems proceed 
from God as their common source ; both must agree, 
and both must have one common end. It cannot be 
otherwise than that trangression should be visited by 
physical punishment for violations of the moral law. 
The sinner may indeed flourish like the green bay tree 
for a certain time ; but sooner or later the moral law will 
demand satisfaction. In many forms of transgression, 
the powers of nature themselves punish the sinner. The 
drunkard, the licentious man, and others like them, 
suffer the inevitable physical consequences of their de- 
grading vices. These consequences do not come upon 
them merely by accident, but by a natural^ physical 
necessity. The way of these transgressors is hard. 
Their punishment is of a vindicatory character ; becomes 
a divine nemesis, relentlessly, remorselessly pursuing the 
evil-doer. The sinner, like Cain, has a mark set upon 
him, and bears the shameful brand of his sin on his very 
face. Such vindicatory punishment is not confined to 
these low and sensual forms of trangression. It extends 
throughout the whole social and moral economy, and 
keeps steady pace with the character of the transgres- 
sion, too ; so that the more deeply the sinner strikes at 



THE WA Y OF THE TRANSGRESSOR, 99 

the heart of the moral law, the more fiercely is he pur- 
sued and the more severely is he punished. 

In this way we can see what must be the relation of 
the physical world to the sinner. All its powers will be 
arrayed against him.. The very stones cry out for his 
punishment, and the far-away stars witness against him. 
All the powers of nature are all the time crying out for 
his destruction. At last the man can no longer with- 
stand the crushing weight of violated law ; he is over- 
whelmed ; and so sinks into his grave. 

But this is not yet all. There is a worse punishment 
still in store for the transgressor. Our present life is 
only a preparation for a future world. Our existence 
here is only transient and temporary. The evidence 
of this meets us on all sides. At the same time we 
become aware that the present order and constitution of 
the world cannot, as we have seen, be violated without cer- 
tain punishment following, and that it assumes a vindica- 
tory character. Yet on the other hand we also see ex- 
ceptional failures of justice. The sinner is not always 
overtaken in his evil way. The wicked do sometimes 
flourish like the green bay tree. What shall we say to 
this ? Shall we say that such facts go to show that God's 
order in the world is a failure, because we cannot see ex- 
actly how it is that not all men are punished in the de- 
gree of their guilt and after the merits of their transgres- 
sion ? 

No^ God's government of this world is strictly moral ; 
but His government of men here is only partial and 
temporary. The present order of things looks forward 
to a higher order. The existence of men in this world is 
preliminary to their existence in the other world, and 
there in that other world there must be an ultimate har- 



100 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^• 

mony, through the full punishment of sinners to the full 
extent of their merits — to the full extent of that which is 
typified in these shadowy punishments here in this 
world. And it is chiefly in view of this final retribu- 
tion in a future state that we can see the full force and 
significance of the declaration of the text that^ " The 
way of transgressors is hard/' 

'' The wicked shall perish." '* Thine enemies shall 
perish." Such is the repeated declaration of the Psalmist. 
There is an absolute certainty that they shall. There is 
something terrible in the mere form in which punishment 
is so repeatedly denounced in Scripture against the 
wicked. Such punishment, in God's moral government 
of the world, is universal, absolute, necessary. In view 
of these facts, that " The way of transgressors is hard," 
but that '*' The path of the just is as a light shining more 
and more unto the perfect day/' we should endeavor to 
make our calling and election sure. 

March ^7, i8yo. 



SUFFERING AND REIGNING, ' 101 



SUFFERING AND REIGNING. 

®6« JE-piJ^tU HlJC55on £cr tfte Iga^. — ^Jilippians ii. 5-1 1. 

" Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the 
form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made hifn- 
self of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was 
made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he 
humbled himself, and became obedient unto deaths even the death of the 
cross*' 

Under what particular view this exhortation is given 
may be seen in the concluding words of the collect : 
*' That we may be counted worthy to have part, both in 
the fellowship of His sufferings, and in the glorious 
power of His resurrection." 

This may be regarded as the leading theme of Palm 
Sunday, which looks to Good Friday as preparatory to 
the resurrection of our Lord. We have the same idea 
in the Gospel for the day, brought into view by the 
character of Christ's entrance into Jerusalem : *^ Fear 
not, daughter of Zion : behold, thy King cometh, sitting 
on an ass' colt." The theme of the Gospel is the same as 
that of the Epistle, viz., the contrast between the humili- 
ation of Christ and His glorification thereafter follow- 
ing. 

The humiliation of Christ begins in His birth, and 
reaches on through His life to His burial and descent 
into Hades. There is a certain amount of analogy be- 
tween the occasion of His entrance into Jerusalem and 
His entrance upon His work, when He was tempted in 
the wilderness. In that temptation the Saviour, in the 



102 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

solitude of His spirit, met the great problem of His life. 
His determination was made in a resolute way then, and 
His whole subsequent public life and ministry were in 
conformity with this resolution. His life was through- 
out a conflict between two worlds — between light and 
darkness. As He came into the world to redeem 
it, He could do so only in the way of conflict. All His 
miracles and teachings bring to view the opposition of 
these two worlds, as well as certain glimpses, at the same 
time, of His ultimate victory and future glorification. 
But, notwithstanding these glimpses, His life was pre- 
eminently one of humiliation. 

The occasion of His last entrance into Jerusalem 
brings these two worlds intoi striking contrast. In His 
temptation the conflict was private ; here it was exposed 
to the view of the world. There were glimpses and pro- 
phecies of His glorification, as in the transfiguration, 
and in the coming of certain Greeks to Him in the tem- 
ple. But these were only transient, however. The 
Messianic hopes of the Jewish world were dashed by 
that declaration of His, ^^ Except a corn of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone." The disci- 
ples themselves were ever and always made to feel that 
the Kingdom belonged to another order entirely, above 
and beyond this world. 

On this occasion we have, as it were, a still brighter 
promise of what was to come. The feeling of the com- 
ing of the Kingdom had been growing among the peo- 
ple, and among the strangers now at Jerusalem and on 
their way to the feast, there was a more or less intense 
conviction that the Kingdom was now nigh at hand. 
They were eagerly awaiting a Redeemer to come to 
their help and deliverance, expecting Him in a temporal 



SUFFERING AND REIGNING, 103 

way, and after a worldly fashion. They imagined that 
He would place Himself at their head in a political way. 
So strong had this feeling grown that some time pre- 
viously, on the occasion of the miraculous feeding of the 
five thousand, He had found it necessary to withdraw 
beyond the sea, "lest they come and take Him by force 
and make him a king." Here, on this occasion, we 
find this same feeling manifested again, heightened and 
intensified, no doubt, also, by the recent raising of Laza- 
rus from the dead. 

Multitudes hailed Him from the walls and gates of 
Jerusalem, and multitudes shouted " Hosanna " as they 
moved along in procession by His side. It was a bril- 
liant display of popular enthusiasm, and may be regarded 
as in some sort a temptation for Christ, as was the prof- 
fer of all the kingdoms of this world by the Evil One in 
the wilderness. This feeling was grounded, no doubt, in 
a right disposition, but was worldly, for they imagined 
that the time had now at length come for Him to declare 
and manifest Himself as their king in a worldly way. 
The hour was now near at hand for His glorification. 
At Cana He said, " Mine hour is not yet come." And 
at the feeding of the five thousand His hour had not 
yet come. But now, after the miracle of raising Lazarus 
from the dead, and after the Pharisees had counselled 
and determined to put Him to death, He comes out from 
His retirement and yields Himself for a time to this pop- 
ular feeling, though He felt that it would yield to another 
end entirely than that they had in view. He yields to 
this popular enthusiasm, neither gratifying nor condemn- 
ing it, but regarding it as necessary in order to preci- 
pitate the designs of the Pharisees, that through it He 
might defeat all such expectations forever, and so come 



104 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. \ 

to the light and glorification of His resurrection from the 
dead. 

In this way we can see how this historical passage in 
the Saviour's life serves to symbolize the humiliation and 
subsequent glorification of His whole life and work. 

The Epistle now bases itself on the consideration of 
the glorification of Christ as something already at hand. 
We have also strongly brought out, in this same Epistle, 
the infinite humiliation of Christ. It goes back to the 
incarnation, and views the humiliation from that stand- 
point. The laying aside of the glory of the Logos is an 
act into which the angels desire to look. The original 
for '^ made Himself of no reputation " is " He emptied 
Himself" (kaurov ixi^toae). What that means we need 
not here at length consider. But we are to remember 
that the incarnation was not a mere theophany. It in- 
volved, according to the language here employed, an 
emptying of deity. The union of the Word with human- 
ity was actual and real, and passed successively through 
all the conditions of our life, birth, development, growth, 
trial, temptation, involving the necessity of prayer as 
really as that of food and rest. His life was an actual 
human trial ; it must have been so, in order that there 
might be also for our humanity in Him an actual vic- 
tory. 

'' He thought it not robbery to be equal with God " — 
better, " He did not pertinaciously cleave to His divin- 
ity," but parted with it, emptied Himself of it, " and was 
made in the likeness of men " — that is, in the actual form 
of man. 

That is the first part of the humiliation of the Son of 
God. But that is not all. Having taken on Him our 
nature, He entered upon our earthly life of humihation, 



SUFFERING AND FEIGNING. 105 

and in the full spirit of obedience to authority, '' He be- 
came obedient unto death, even unto the death of the 
cross." 

In this brief way the Apostle brings into view the hu- 
miliation that he may contrast with it the following 
glorification. We cannot at all understand the latter 
without the former. The two are mutually conditional. 
" Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given 
him a name which is above every name." Observe, also, 
that this exaltation of Christ is here presented not merely 
as the exaltation of the Logos ; for as the Logos He had 
glory with the Father before the world was. It is the ex- 
altation and glorification of the world in Him, He passed 
through the world, and bore it with Him and in His own 
person in triumph up to heaven. 

It is here that the Lesson for the day comes into 
view. The humiliation is followed by glorification, not 
primarily, however, by way of reward, though that is in 
it, too, but not in any outward way merely, as depending 
on the mind of God, but as necessarily involved as an 
unfailing consequence. The glorification, above and be- 
yond the fact that it is a reward by virtue of inward con- 
stition and relationship, is furthermore the necessary re- 
sult of the wTiole life of Christ, and this is the matter of 
chief importance here. The glorification of Christ is 
never appreciated properly, except as it is seen to be an 
actual victory of Christ, beginning in His birth in Beth- 
lehem and resulting finally in His ascension from Olivet. 
This victory, in the nature of the case, could not be 
secured from without but only from within humanity. 
The victory must be accomplished in the very bosom 
of our life, and somehow by the very powers of our 
life. For that reason Jesus tabernacled in the flesh 



106 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ^ 

for three and thirty years, and endured all its suffer- 
ings. He could not have the victory standing apart 
from our life, beyond it or above it. He must be in 
humanity in its deepest ground, joining Himself to it 
by a holy conception of the Virgin. The Kingdom of 
Christ thus involves a complete victory in the world. 
He grappled with the world forces in their historical 
form, and passed by the transition through death and 
resurrection over into a higher order. His glorification 
is His victory^ as the necessary result of His life. 

We are called on to-day to contemplate this exam- 
ple. The victory of Christ thus considered is not a 
victory outside the world, but one that is now and 
here present in it. It is here repeating itself in the 
believer, both in the form of humiliation and in that of 
glorification. As these could not be separated in 
Christ, so neither can they in the believer. There is 
but one law for the Master and for the disciple. That 
is grounded in the very constitution of our being. St. 
Paul earnestly desired to have fellowship in the suf- 
ferings of Christ. He wished to have part not prima- 
rily in His glory, but in His sufferings, saying, '' If 
we suffer we shall also reign with Him." We cannot 
have the latter without the former. If we are in 
earnest we will covet a part in the sufferings of Christ, 
the idea of the true Christian life being not merely 
that we should submit to them, but rather that we 
should court them, for then are we nearest to the 
cross of our Lord. In the absence of all worldly hope 
and confidence, then it is that Christ comes nearest to 
us. That is the use we should make of this whole occa- 
sion for the purpose of our own personal profit as 
believing souls, as we see in the collect, where we pray 



SUFFERING AND REIGNING. 107 

that " we may be counted worthy to have part both 
in the fellowship of His sufferings, and in the glorious 
power of His resurrection." 

We notice, briefly, one more thought — that the life 
of Christ running through His whole work, and com- 
ing out here especially in this cry of '^ Hosanna," is a 
type of our life. We are so apt to look on the world 
in its outward progress as w^orking out in some cer- 
tain way the end of human life. Such is the belief 
and the boast of the world. And the tendency of the 
Church nowaday is to make a compromise with the 
world's vain hope and expectation in this way. The 
world can never, in the true sense of the word, glorify 
itself, much less can it ever glorify the Church. The 
course of our Saviour's ministry, starting in the temp- 
tation in the wilderness and ending here in the ex- 
periences of Palm Sunday as preparatory to Good 
Friday, we cannot at all properly contemplate without 
feeling that in the consciousness of Christ at least (and 
what a consciousness that was !) the world is now and 
forever must remain utterly and hopelessly incapable of 
leading itself up by its own power to its own glorifica- 
tion. 

March 24^ 1872. 



108 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



^^t dFirgt Suntrag after iSagter. 

'^THK GLORIOUS PRINCE OF SALVATION." 
?^£ink)S ii. 10. 

'' For it beca?ne him^ for whom are all things^ and by whom are all things^ in 
bringing many sons unto glory ^ to make the captain of their salvation per- 
fect through suffer ings.^^ 

The words, "' the captain of their salvation/' are in the 
original 'Apxfjyoc, zrf (TUDrrjptac: aurojv. The meaning of 
the word here rendered ^^ captain," is not fully expressed 
by that term. The idea is rather that of a path-finder, 
or a breaker-of-the-way — like a prince leading his people 
and opening the way for them to follow. 

The redemption of the world in Christ is not something 
magical or abrupt. It is no after-thought entering into 
the divine mind for the first time at a certain stage in the 
world's progress, but stands in the scheme of the world 
and of human history from the beginning. That scheme 
included the fall and the remedy for the fall. There is a 
close connexion between the work of redemption and the 
work of creation. We can easily see that relation when 
we consider that redemption will work a change not only 
in the stream of history, but reaches out to the physical 
world of nature as well, not having attained its glorious 
consummation until it has introduced '' the new heavens 
and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." The last 
times will involve a vast change not only in the moral 
but also in the physical world. Standing thus between 
creation on the ohe hand, and the end of all things on 
the other, we can easily see that redemption is nothing 



THE GLORIOUS PRINCE OF SALVATION, 109 

magical or abrupt, but stands in intimate relation with 
the law of human history, with the plan or scheme of the 
world considered as a whole. 

This, the cosmical relation of redemption, as we may- 
call it, was evidently in the mind of the writer at the 
time of writing, as we see in the words, ^' For it became 
him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, 
in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain 
of their salvation perfect through sufferings." There was 
a necessity that Christ should suffer, that He should be 
the way-breaker, the leader and prince of our humanity 
in suffering. There was a necessity and a reason for a 
crucified Saviour. The declaration of the text is that 
the way could not be made open for others except by 
Christ going before. Then, also, it implies that there was 
but one way in which that great leader could go — there 
was no other way — and that was the way of suffering. 
There could be no magic about it, such as the ancient 
gnostics, for example, conceived our Lord's person and 
sufferings to have been, resolving all into a mere show 
or magical appearance. There was a necessity in the 
case not only for a way-breaker, or captain, but for one 
that was real and not visionary. It was not possible that 
such a gnostic captain of salvation could save, because 
the barriers which lay between us and God were not 
fantastic but real, consisting of the kingdom of Satan, 
which is a real and not an imaginary or figurative king- 
dom. That this latter is a real power shows itself plainly 
enough in the fact that its might reaches not only into the 
world of intelligence but also into that of nature, for man 
grows out of nature through his body, and his constitu- 
tion is such that if he as an intelligent being falls, nature 
falls with him. *' Ry one man sin entered into the world, 



110 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. ^ 

and death by sin/' The evil and the ruin reached through 
man's spiritual nature down into the lower physical side 
of his being. And death, as the result of sin, is some- 
thing real also, exerting a physical power. When all 
nature is, by the Apostle, said to be '' groaning and travail- 
ing in pain " — it is not a mere figure of speech but a 
sober statement of fact. 

All this is implied in our text. It is not enough that 
sin should be pardoned and the will rectified. There 
must be more than that. The law of the curse lying on 
the world must be removed or overcome, by a creative 
force going down as deep as the curse. Redemption not 
only takes away sin, but abolishes death, overcomes 
Hades. These must be broken, abolished. And there 
was only one way in which that could be done. It could 
not be accomplished by the establishment of an outward 
earthly kingdom, nor yet by the assistance and co-opera- 
tion of merely humanitarian eflforts. There is no healing 
or helping of our poor humanity which leaves it in the 
bosom and on the plane of this life, leaving death not 
overcome and the curse still unbroken. To what would 
all that amount ? If there were to be any release at all, 
it must of necessity be by death, by going down to the 
very ground and foundation of the curse. If there were 
to be any path broken, the path-finder must himself 
endure sufTering. Men could not be saved as it were by 
a stroke from heaven. It Vv^as not enough that such a 
deliverer should merely seem to stand among men, and 
appear to suffer, and then abruptly and suddenly flyaway 
again to the heavens, leaving only a sham deliverance 
behind him. He could not thus be the captain of sal- 
vation. He must suffer death, go down into Hades, 
destroy death and rise superior to both. He became 



THE GLORIOUS PRINCE OF SALVATION. \\\ 

perfect for Himself; for when He stood among us He 
could not relieve Himself of the situation in which He 
was, save only by carrying our humanity in His own 
person triumphantly through the gates and bars of 
death. 

We can see, in this way, wherein consisted the necessity 
of suffering for our great captain of salvation. It was 
necessary that He should suffer in order that righteous- 
ness and life might be obtained for us. But we are to 
remember that this necessity was not a merely outward 
necessity. He must suffer in order to be true to Himself* 
and in order that He might be a way-breaker that others 
might follow in the pathway He had opened — by which 
we do not mean that others should do what He did, for 
He alone of all the sons of Adam broke the way through 
sin, death and hell. 

It is also implied here that there never was, is not now 
nor ever can be any other prince of salvation, or any 
other way of escape from sin and death. If before 
Christ's day no other way could be found, certainly none 
could be found after. '' I am the way, the truth and the 
life,'' says our Saviour. And again '' No man cometh 
unto the Father but by me." *' Neither is there salvation 
in any other," says St. Peter, *' for there is none other 
name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must 
be saved." If we wish to gain heaven, there is only one 
thing for us to do — choose Him for our leader and 
captain and prince of salvation, and to follow in His 
footsteps over that way trodden by the feet of that vast 
and glorious army of the saints looking down upon us 
from the battlements of heaven as witnesses of our 
christian course. We may, indeed, look to these wit- 
nesses and consider their good and godly example, for 



112 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

our encouragement, but above all are we to '^ look to 
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the 
joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising 
the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the 
throne of God." 

Furthermore, we are all assured that the way is now 
open, the path broken, the enemy conquered, 3eath slain^ 
Satan bound. In these circurristances of victory by the 
Son of Man, we are all called upon to consider for our 
encouragement the high vantage ground upon which our 
feet are placed. We are called upon to make our calling 
and election sure. There is, thus, much that is truly 
animating and inspiring in the text — but there is in it 
much of warning too. As the writer of this epistle says 
in the opening words of this chapter — " Therefore we 
ought tg give the more earnest heed to the things which 
we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. 
For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and 
every transgression and disobedience received a just 
recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect 
so great salvation ? " And then the same writer goes on 
to add : — '^ But one in a certain place testified, saying, 
What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of 
man that thou visitest him ? Thou madest him a little 
lower than the angels, . . . Thou hast put all things 
under his feet . . . But now we see not yet all things 
put under him " — (indeed, the reverse is true ; for instead 
of having the world under him, man in his fallen state is 
under the world, and under Satan ; so that man's state 
and condition is full of discouragement) — '* But we see 
Jesus " — (who has conquered, and gathered up the broken 
fortunes of humanity) — -'^who was made a little lower 
than the angels for the suffering of death " — (not remain- 



THE GLORIOUS PRINCE OF SALVATION. 113 

ing bound under the power of death, but arising out of 
and ascending above and beyond it, and so opening the 
way) — '* crowned with glory and honor " — (not for Him- 
self only, but for sinners) — *' that he by the grace of God . 
should taste death for every man/' — and thus take away 
the sting of death for all who follow Him in the way of 
the Gospel. 

April 2^ y i8yo. 



114 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



Cf)e Si^coni SuntJag after iSaster. 

SKKING THE FATHER. 

3(o!)n xiv. 9. 

" Jesus said unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou 
not known me^ Philip f He that hath seen me^ hath seen the Father ; and 
how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father ? '^ 

Of the being of God in His absolute character we can 
form no conception whatever, for the reason that such a 
conception would involve a limitation of a Being who 
is illimitable, forasmuch as He is the infinite God. It is 
by limiting and bounding things that we can apprehend 
them with the understanding. God in His absolute 
character cannot be apprehended by the finite mind ; a 
fact which was understood by the heathen writers who 
uniformly spoke of Him as absolute, separate existence, 
without limitation or confinement. Sometimes God is 
spoken of by them as ^' The Abyss," or as '' Silence," 
conveying the idea that God in His absolute nature 
cannot be apprehended by the finite mind. If w^e do 
attempt anything of this kind, we get only a negative 
conception at best. We say, God is infinite — that is He 
is not bounded as to space. Or, again, we say, God is 
eternal — that is, He is not bounded as to time. 

So then we cannot have any apprehension of God in 
the way of the understanding. There is another way, 
however, in which God may make Himself apprehensi- 
ble, so as to come into union with our being, namely, in 
the way of a revelation — a coming out of this darkness 
and abyss. Revelation universally, and in the widest 



SEEING THE FATHER, 115 

sense of the word, is an act of God by which He mani- 
fests Himself in such a way, or under such conditions, 
as that He may be seen and understood^ relatively but 
not absolutely, by an intelligent person. Under this 
view it is that the Scriptures speak of the revelation of 
God. They represent Him as being utterly beyond all 
apprehension, so far as mere subjective human effort is 
concerned. '^ Canst thou by searching find out God ? " 
it is said in the book of Job : '^ Canst thou find out the 
Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven, 
what canst thou do ? it is deeper than hell, what canst 
thou know ? " 

Yet, at the same time, under another view, it is also 
said in the Scriptures that we may know God. ''This 
is eternal life that they might know thee and Jesus 
Christ whom thou hast sent." Many passages might 
be quoted in which it is said that God may be known, 
under the view of a revelation. And that revelation 
which God has been pleased to make of Himself for our 
human world (we know not how it ma}^ be in other 
worlds, and with beings differently constituted) presents 
itself under different forms more or less relative. 

I. The first and most immediate revelation He has 
made of Himself is in the world of nature : which how- 
ever would be of no account without something further. 
It would not be complete, or of any account at all, with- 
out our human nature. Nature is represented in the 
Scripture as a book for study, it may be not for us 
alone : it may be for the angels quite as well as for us, 
for aught we know. '^ Day unto day uttereth speech, 
and night unto night showeth knowledge." The very 
stars in their courses speak out His praises. St. Paul, 
in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans says, 



116 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

that, '' The invisible things of him from the creation of 
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even his eternal power and God- 
head : " and he then goes on to show the sin of the 
heathen world in not acknowledging His existence, and 
in falling away from the worship of God, to that of the 
creature. 

II. Now, however, as we have said, the revelation be- 
comes effective only as taken in connection with the 
presence of intelligent and self-conscious being. Mind 
must be present to serve as a mirror to make nature in- 
telligible ; and the only way that we can see that to be 
possible, is by supposing there to be an original, eternal 
harmony between the outward world of nature and the 
inner world of mind, by virtue of which the outward car- 
ries this sense from the beginning, so that it may be re- 
flected by the thought of man. These two, the world of 
nature and the world of mind, are constitutionally one, 
as two hemispheres of the same globe, or as two oppo- 
site, though mutually complementing parts of the same 
great creative scheme or plan. There is the same rea- 
son — in different forms, of course — in both, both proceed- 
ing from the hand of the same God. Nature wakes up 
to a consciousness of herself in man. We can thus see 
that what is sometimes spoken of as *'a revelation of God 
in the world of nature " takes a far higher form when it 
comes to be a revelation of God in the constitution of 
the human mind. There we have a revelation of God 
far surpassing any possible revelation in the world of 
nature. '' There is a spirit in man : and the inspiration 
of the Almighty giveth them understanding.'^ The di- 
vine spirit and the human are so related that it is not 
possible for the human to unfold itself so as to under- 



SEEING THE FATHER. 117 

stand itself and nature without involving, at the same 
time, a revelation of God. In such a revelation (in the 
human constitution, namely) we have the presence of 
God in a measure far beyond what it is in nature : for 
here we meet the development of the will, and enter the 

' ethical sphere. And as this is not at all possible below 
man, the revelation moves on a far higher plane, and is 
correspondingly greater and more glorious than it can 
be in any sphere below that of man. In nature we 
see God's revelation physically : in man we see God's 
revelation ethically. In man the revelation unfolds it- 
self in the form of history. Here we meet something 
grander and greater far than the voice of God speaking 
to us in the tones of the thunder or in the sparkling 
stars in the heavens above, for here we are listening to 
God speaking to us in the voice of the ages. 

III. Without dwelling upon this any longer, I proceed 
to say that the only full, complete, and the highest pos- 
sible revelation that God can make of Himself is the 
revelation that has been made in sending Christ into the 

"world. He became flesh of our flesh, and ^ bone of our 
bone, and so entered the stream of our human life, as to 
become the centre of its power. This mode of revela- 
tion, however, cannot be said to bring out the whole 
sense of God's absolute being for our apprehension^ yet 
as compared with the former, it brings God into contact 
with us in a way that is not possible through either the 
world of nature or the world of mind . This form of 
revelation is not to be taken merely in the sense of some- 
thing intellectual, as if it were only a certain amount of 
instruction as to the being and the attributes of God. 
Neither must we regard it as a simple addition to other 
methods or schemes of revelation, as if Christ came 



118 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

merely to give us more knowledge than we can find 
either in nature, or in that revelation which God made 
in earlier ages, by the agency of Moses, for example. 
Such a revelation would be, at best, only the old revela- 
tion under a higher form. The revelation of God in 
Christ must be regarded as having been from the very 
beginning, not in the way of teaching, but of being. 
Unless we reach that thought we never can understand 
either history or nature, nor the meaning of the text, 
*' He that hath seen me " — not merely with the outward 
sense. It is true, sense-perception was the necessary 
medium for the revelation of His glory, but nevertheless 
the revelation was not taken in by the outward eye 
alone, for multitudes saw Him, and viewed Him merely 
as a common man, and did not at all see the Father in 
Him, but crucified Him between two thieves. Even in 
perceiving any object in nature, the outward form of the 
object and the sense of the beholder mediate the spirit- 
ual communication between the two ; but in order to a 
true communion with the object there must be some- 
thing more and something deeper than a mere sense- 
perception. 

When our Lord said to Philip, '' He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father," He did not mean to say, 
^^ He that hath come to understand my higher nature in 
the way of intellectual observation." God could not be 
seen even by Moses by sense observation: and He never 
has been and never can be seen by merely intellectual ob- 
servation. There must be something deeper. The 
mind may indeed go very far in the way of intellectual 
speculation as to what is necessarily involved in the 
being and attributes of God, but to what does all that 
amount ? It did not amount to very much, in the case 



SEEING THE FATHER. 119 

of Philip here, at all events, He was embarrass.ed, and 
said to Christ, '' Shew us the Father." Who is He ? 
Where is He ? What relation does He sustain to Thee, 
and to us ? Our Saviour plainly did not mean, by His 
reply, to say that knowledge of Him consisted in His 
teaching : for Philip and the other disciples knew hardly 
anything as compared with the great theologians of later 
days; for the work of redemption had not yet been 
wrought out, there had been no descent into Hades, no 
resurrection, no ascension and glorification. The fact 
that our Lord said these things under these circumstan- 
ces shows plainly enough that the knowledge of Him 
was possible for Philip and the other disciples and did 
not require such great intellectual power. On the con- 
trary it implies that they had known Him before this, 
and did so know Him then. 

The organ of such knowledge was faith. Only thus 
can this revelation of God in Christ come to any maij. 
Only so did it come to those who actually saw Christ 
with the eyes of the body. That revelation authentica- 
ted itself to them. Why did the disciples believe in 
Him ? Because God in Christ had so taken hold of 
them that they were overwhelmed with sorrow at the 
thought of separation from Him. 

" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." That 
is the only way man can see the Father. That never 
can be, as some have dreamed, through the medium of our 
human life made commensurate with the ideal. In the 
person of Christ we have not merely an idealized human- 
ity, but a humanity joined to divinity, and a revelation 
therefore of God in man. It was not simply such a rev- 
elation as that God makes of Himself in the storm, the 
ocean, the stars, the cataract, or even such as is found in 



120 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

history. No doctrine, no speculation, however wisely 
or however far conducted, can ever mount up to the 
dignity, the sublime majesty of such a revelation as is 
here meant. The revelation must be joined to our very 
life, actually, and not in the way of mere theory. It was 
undoubtedly for this reason that Christ came into or- 
ganic, vital, concrete union with our life, and thus made 
an intelligent apprehension of the Father possible to us, 
as was seen after His resurrection, and will be fully real- 
ized only in His second coming. 

There are different degrees of such seeing. The only 
true knowledge of God becomes possible to us only in so 
far as we are inserted into this higher life, and grow up in 
His likeness. When we come to look at the text in this 
way, we see how absurd was this request of Philip, 
though it came from a pure and simple mind. '^ Shew 
us the Father," said he. How could God be known ex- 
cept in Christ? All other ways of knowing God are ut- 
terly of no account, as set over against the living appre- 
hension of Him in His Son, who is ^' the brightness of His 
glory, and the express image of His person." 

Many practical reflections follow naturally from this 
course of thought, but I shall notice, briefly only two — 

I. In a declaration of this kind, which is only one of 
hundreds of similar import, we have a direct argument 
for the divinity of Christ, the force of which goes far be- 
yond that of any texts considered as addressed merely 
to the understanding, or as addressed to men outside of 
the christian sphere, to be interpreted merely by the in- 
tellect. Such texts, considered as thus addressed, can 
carry no weight as compared with this. We have many- 
texts like the one under consideration, and what is re- 
markable about them is their consistent harmony. ^^ No 



SEEING THE FATHER, 121 

man knoweth the Son but the Father ; neither knoweth 
any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
the Son will reveal Him." '' He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father; how sayest thou then, shew us 
the Father ? " How can you doubt for a moment what 
our Saviour held in His own consciousness ? Could He 
have used language at all like this unless He intended to 
assert His divinity? 

11. The thought of the original, constitutional and 
eternal kinship between our mind and the divine mind. 
We cannot think of the Incarnation as a Hindoo Avatar, 
God taking the form of one animal now and another 
then. There cannot be any incarnation where the two 
natures to be joined are incongruous. The original re- 
lationship between God and man is such that salvation 
was possible. This is a great thought, without the help 
ofwhichweare hkely to go astray in our theological 
thinking. When we look to the stars/' What is man 
that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of Man that 
thou visitest him ? '^ But what is this manifestation of 
God as compared with that revelation He has made in 
Christ ? There it is that the full dignity of our human 
life appears. Let us not count ourselves unworthy, or 
be neglectful, of so great a revelation and salvation. To 
them that count themselves so, well may we apply the 
language of the proverb — '' Wherefore is the price of 
wisdom in the hand of a fool? " "See that ye receive 
not the grace of God in vain.^' 

May 7, 1870, 



122 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



^f)t dPifti} Suntiag after QSamt. 

THK BBLIKVKR'S crown OF I.IFK. 

3^titIatioit iii. II. 

*' Behold, I come quickly ; hold that fast which thou hast^ that no man take 
thy crown.^'' 

The crown has been in every age a symbol of victory. 
We may regard the crown referred to in this passage of 
Scripture, either as a crown of nature or as a crown of 
grace, or better still as involving both the one and the 
other. The former conception attaches to our human 
existence from its very beginning. Man is the crown of 
nature, as we see in the account given of the creation in 
the first chapters of Genesis. All nature comes to its 
completion in man — which could not at all be the case, 
however, except by reason of its unity with the spirit of 
man. A declaration of this underlying unity we find in 
the account of the creation of man as given in Genesis : 
" And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life : 
and man became a living soul.'^ As thus constituted 
man may be said to have been crowned from the begin- 
ning with glory and majesty, as is said in the book of the 
Psalms, " For thou hast made him a little lower than the 
angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. 
Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of 
thy hands : thou hast put all things under his feet.'* 

This crown stood directly in the spirit of man, as made 
in the image and likeness of God. He was designed by 



777^ BELIEVER'S CROWN OF LIFE, 123 

his very constitution to be the prophet, priest and king 
of the creation below him. 

The order, however, as instituted in the time of man's 
innocency, was not kept, and is now abnormal. The 
Psalmist indeed says, '' Thou hast put all things under 
his feet;" but the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
in commenting on this passage, says, '^ We see not yet 
all things put under him, but we see Jesus who was made 
a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, 
crowned with glory and honor." In the present disor- 
ganized state consequent upon sin, such is the relation 
between man and the world of nature that, instead of 
being her lord and sovereign, man is a prey to her forces 
and powers, and eventually succumbs to death. 

But in Christ Jesus the lofty position, for which our 
nature was designed by the Creator, has been regained. 
In Him the race has been recapitulated— it has received 
a new headship in Him, as it is said in Ephesians i. lo — 
'' That in the dispensation of the fulness of the times he 
might gather together in one all things in Christ (or, 
might recapitulate or re-head all things in Him) both 
which are in heaven and which are on earth.^' And 
again, in the twenty-second verse of the same chapter it 
is said, '^ And hath put all things under his feet, and 
gave him to be the head over all things to the church." 
Being, in this way the new, living, organic Head of the 
race, all that original dignity of our nature, of which we 
have been speaking, holds first of all in the person of 
Christ, and is restored to those who are in union with His 
divine-human life in the spirit. On the day of Pentecost, 
the Holy Ghost, who thus far in our Lord's ministry had 
been confined to His own person, and who previously 
had not been given^ *' because Jesus was not yet glorified," 



124 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

became universal in the scope and power of His blessed 
operations among the dying sons of men, in making 
them partakers of the new higher life introduced into the 
world by 'Hhe second Adam, the Lord from heaven." 

'' Let no man take from thee thy crown," now, has 
reference to this. The crown had fallen into the dust, as 
it were, but is now again lifted up out of its unseemly 
degradation. The two crowns (of nature and of grace) 
are not related externally or magically. It is perfectly 
plain from the teachings of the New Testament that the 
two creations, the natural and the supernatural, proceed 
from one common origin and source, The Logos, and 
there can be no contradiction, therefore, between the 
crown of nature and the crown of grace. The exhorta- 
tion, '' Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take 
thy crown,^' should not be regarded, consequently, as hav- 
ing to do only with the one or the other, exclusively or 
mainly, but should be considered as applying to both in 
that close inner relationship holding between the two. 

Notice the emphasis evidently intended to be laid upon 
the word ''thy." It is, *' Thy crown." There is here a 
present, personal possession. '' Hold that fast which 
thou hast'' — the crown that belongs to thee as thine own 
right and property. So far as the dignity of our nature 
is properly held to, even though we are fallen, we are re- 
quired to hold fast our crown. There is a false view of 
the fall according to which man has lost all dignity in 
the scale of being, all possibility of salvation. Capacities 
of looking up to God we still have, and hold in our in- 
most consciousness. The crown is indeed fallen into the 
dust, but it is not lost. '' There is a spirit in man, and 
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understand- 
ing." What is there in all the world that can in any way 



THE BELIEVER'S CROWN OF LIFE. 125 

compete with the glorious possession of this great dig- 
nity, this heavenward tendency of the spirit of man? 
How poor, how vain, how mean and unsatisfying is all in 
comparison beside ! 

But these lofty aspirations may be repressed. The 
rational nature may not be allowed to assert itself The 
meaning of one's personality may not be honored in its 
great and high claims. '' Hold that fast which thou 
hast," therefore ; make due account of your intelligent 
nature ; master all earthly sympathies, affections and 
passions in the service of this your high and immortal 
calling. 

The full force and meaning of the text however, ap- 
pears only when it is considered to refer to the christian 
crown of grace. Here there is also a personal, present 
possession. Those addressed by the text are regarded 
as having been already brought into union with Christ, 
first of all in their baptism, and then, on the ground and 
basis of this, in their own subjective, personal participa- 
tion in Christ and all His benefits. There is, of course, 
no power in baptism to save without a personal appro- 
priating activity. The exhortation is not, '' Seek that 
which thou hast not yet obtained,'' but '' Hold that fast 
which thou hast." The address is made to christians, 
as having something of unspeakable value. Honor your 
baptism. Let no one persuade you to depreciate its 
value, as if it had no meaning or force. Not only our 
baptism, however, but also our whole christian experi- 
ence constitute our priceless crown of grace. 

There is a possibility of losing this crown. As a man 
may sink his rational nature in that which is lower, so 
also may he lose the force and power of his baptism by 
an irreligious and wicked life. 



126 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

Observe the independent activity of the subject as 
being able to prevent this loss, or robbery. '' Hold that 
fast which thou hast" — let no man take away thy crown. 
We cannot be robbed of our intelligence or moral con- 
sciousness in a merely outward way by the will of another, 
not even when such robbery should go the full length of 
our physical destruction. We may be deprived of our 
property, our material possessions in that way, but that 
which pertains to our personality cannot be alienated 
save by our consent and co-operation. We may be 
killed by the will of another, but we may not be robbed 
of any of our spiritual possessions except by our own 
will. In view of this, what a tremendous force and mean- 
ing there is in the exhortation. Let no man take away 
thy crown ! thy crown of nature, thy crown of grace, 
thine imperishable, inalienable birthright as an immortal 
man ! 

Regeneration is not, indeed, a standing, fixed posses- 
sion, but a continual influx or flow of gracious life into 
the soul from powers above and beyond. A man's 
christian life is not his property as a horse is. What 
then is he to do, if this is not his property ? Shall he sit 
still and do nothing, overpowered by the idea of his 
helplessness ? Not at all ! We are to hold our spirits 
in right relation constantly, and keep them always open 
and receptive to this gracious life coming down from 
above. Man has that power. Intelligence does not 
govern the will, but the will governs intelligence. Our 
Saviour says, '' The light of the body is the eye : if there- 
fore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be 
full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be 
darkness, how great is that darkness !" That profound 



THE BELIEVER'S CROWN OF LIFE, 127 

declaration of our Saviour's, which looks -so far down 
into the moral and spiritual depths of man's nature, 
shows clearly enough that there is nothing magical or 
fatalistic in the possession or in the loss of moral and 
spiritual illumination. We are responsible for " the light 
of the body " which is " the eye '' — whether it be '* single," 
or whether it be ''evil." 

We are to apply this to the circumstances in which 
we stand, to ourselves as immortal, and as destined to 
an immortality beyond the stars. What a wide meaning 
there is for each and every one of us, what a stirring per- 
sonal appeal, in those words, '* Hold that fast which thou 
hast, that no man take thy crown !'' 

May ^tk, 1872. 



128 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 



ascension Hag. 

THK HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORTY DAYS. 

%ti% i. 9. 

'' And when He had spoken these things^ while they beheld, he was taken up ; 
and a cloud received him out of their sight. ^^ 

After His resurrection from the dead, our Saviour re- 
mained here on earth during a period of forty days. 
This was an interimistic period between His previous life 
on earth and His final glorification with the Father. 
The full meaning and significance of this remarkable 
period, we, of course, in our present circumstances are 
utterly unable to understand. Much here is a mystery 
for our faith, which, it were vain to attempt to explain or 
to make clear for the reason. Yet in the onward move- 
ment of our Saviour's mediatorial work, this period was 
one of the very highest significance, and it contains 
much that we may understand and much that is of im- 
portance for us to understand. 

Our Saviour remained on the earth forty days after 
His resurrection and before his ascension. Why ? Why 
did He not ascend to the right hand of the Father at 
once and immediately after His resurrection ? We might 
also ask, Why did He not arise from the dead imme- 
diately instead of lying in the tomb for three days ? He 
might have arisen in three hours, or in three moments 
just as well. Why did He not do so? Because such an 
immediate and instantaneous resurrection would have 
partaken too much of the nature of magic. It would 



HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORTY DAYS. 129 

have violated the natural historical sense of mankind. It 
would have been so far above and beyond human nature 
as to render it impossible to be grasped^ and would not 
have stood forth so truly as an object for faith as it does. 

Our Saviour's death was a real death, His burial a 
real burial. His lying in the tomb was a reality, and 
His resurrection also was a real historical fact about 
which there could be no doubt. There was no magic in 
His resurrection, as there might at least have seemed to 
be had He risen immediately after His burial. 

So too with this interimistic period between His resur- 
rection and His ascension. It was the necessary his- 
toric connection between our Saviour's previous life on 
earth, and His glorification at the right hand of the 
Father; and in this consists its main significance. It 
was a period of transition, during which, as we may 
suppose, our Saviour was gradually laying aside or throw- 
ing off His previous form of existence for one that was 
higher ; though in what way this was done we, of course, 
do not at all know. 

It was a period of transition from one form of existence 
to another, a bridging over of the chasm between the 
natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, 
the finite and the infinite. This we may see from the 
fact that during this period our Saviour was the same 
person as before, and yet in many important regards His 
person during this period appears to have been widely 
different from what it had been previously. He was the 
same person, so we are expressly told in many passages 
relating His appearance to the disciples, as for instance 
to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, and again in 
the upper chamber where Thomas was convinced of His 
identity. And yet, at the same time, a vast change had 
9 



130 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

now passed upon Him. When He rose from the dead, 
it was not to return to the same kind of existence He 
had led previously. His resurrection in this regard was 
quite different from that of Lazarus, for example, who after 
having been raised from the dead, returned to precisely 
the same kind of life he had formerly led. Not so here, 
however. That kind of existence upon which our Saviour 
had now entered was far different, evidently, from our ordi- 
nary human life. This is sufficiently indicated by the fact of 
His sudden appearance and disappearance, as on the way 
to EmmauSj where after the interview in the home of the 
disciples, ^^ He vanished out of their sight." He was no 
longer subject, as He had before been^ to the limitations 
of time and space, although He was the same person 
precisely as when He was offered on the cross. 

We can easily see in this way, then, that these forty 
days constited a period of transition from one form of 
existence to another ; and this period is of vast account 
and great significance as showing the historical character 
of Christianity. It shows very significantly that Chris- 
tianity, originating in the person of Christ, is not a doc- 
trine, but an ever on-flowing, organic life, in which no 
fact can be of a fragmentary nature, or occupy an 
isolated position. 

We may suppose, too, that this period was of signifi- 
cance for the disciples themselves. During this period, 
no doubt, our Saviour had a great work to perform in 
reference to them in the way of instruction. He doubt- 
less told them many things, not recorded in the Scrip- 
ture, and gave them important directions and instructions 
concerning the government of the primitive Church. But 
their preparation for their sacred Apostolic office con- 
sisted not so much in such instruction in doctrine, or in 



HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORTY DAYS, 131 

such directions as to the management of the Church, as 
in His most solemn induction of them into their holy 
office, and the investing of them with its sacred obliga- 
tions. As to the full meaning of all that had happened 
and was still further to happen in the institution of the 
Church, they must of course have been considerably in 
the dark ; and it was not until the day of Pentecost that 
they came to a full and clear understanding of their di- 
vine commission. 

To an earnest and reflecting mind no stronger proof 
of the authenticity of the Scriptures or the genuineness 
of the Gospel narrative, could possibly be given than 
the account of our Saviour's appearance on earth after 
His resurrection. That a Saviour^ or a founder of a 
religious system, should be introduced or brought upon 
the stage shortly after He had been buried out of sight 
of men, when the world imagined that He was no more, 
was entirely beyond the conception of any mortal man, 
beyond all art and all thought. Men might indeed have 
conceived the idea of bringing the founder of a religion 
on the stage after he was dead, in the form of a pure 
spirit, but none ever would have dreamed of so present- 
ing him as our Lord is represented by the Evangelists 
as having appeared during this period of forty days. 

The appearance of our Saviour here on earth during 
this time was the natural preparation for His glorious 
ascension to the right hand of the Father, which was 
another step or stage in the great unfolding mystery of 
redemption. We see at once the close relation of the 
two. Had He ascended on high immediately after His 
resurrection, His ascension could never have been for 
us the same object of faith as it is now ; for in such a 
case we might, and very probably would, have been in 



132 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

danger of regarding Him as ascending on high as a pure 
spirit, and not as taking with Him, in a glorified form, 
our human nature, as we know He did. 

The ascension of our Saviour, however, stands related 
historically not only to all that went before, but to all 
that was to come after, not only to His resurrection from 
the dead, but also to His coming again to judge the 
quick and the dead. 

For, when He ascended up on high, '' Behold two men 
stood by them in white apparel which said, Ye men of 
Galilee, why stand ye gazing up unto heaven ? This 
same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven 
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go 
into heaven " — reproving the disciples, as it were, for 
supposing that this was to be the end of the glorious 
work of redemption, chiding them for ^' gazing up into 
heaven," as if the Saviour were now gone into the 
heaven forever. *' This same Jesus shall come again." 
Here was to be the final completion of the glorious work 
of Christ, His second coming. Toward this, all the dif- 
ferent acts and successive stages of His life had. been 
looking forward, and this is the one great problem of the 
world — the grand consummation toward which all 
things are now moving. 

May 6, 1S69. Note — This sermon was written from memory after the 
dehvery, and not from notes taken at the time. 



OBEDIENCE THE WAY, ETC. - 133 



Cf)e jFourteent^ 5tintiaB after Crinitg. 

OBKDIE^NCK THE WAY TO A KNOWLKDGK OF THK 
TRUTH. 

Softtt vii. 17. 

" If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be 
of God, or whether I speak of myself J^ 

Reason is the dignity and glory of our human life. 
By this we are distinguished from the animal world, in 
which instinct prevails. Reason, however, is not to be 
regarded as a simple or single power or faculty of the 
soul of man. On the contrary, it cannot be rightly con- 
templated except as being complex in its very nature, 
and as involving an entire order, or series, of powers or 
faculties wherein the intelligent nature of man is man- 
ifested. 

There is, first of all, the intelligence, or the theoreti- 
cal side of the reason, which is a power of taking in 
knowledge from the outside world, and which covers our 
intellectual life from the lowest and most primary forms 
of sensation up to what is sometimes called ** Pure 
Thinking." 

Then, secondly, we have the practical side of the rea- 
son — the will ; the power of acting from within out- 
ward; of telling back on the things around us. The 
will is a part of the reason of man — for the will al- 
ways implies an intelligible end or purpose of the act. 

These two sides of the reason cannot be separated in 
actual fact, however much we may distinguish between 
the two for the purposes of our thinking and scientific 



134 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

reflection. For how can a man take any knowledge of 
outward things unless he first of all wills so to do ? Or, 
how can a man will to do anything unless he has, at the 
same time, a knowledge of the thing he proposes to do ? 
Yet it has ever been a vexed question with men of 
science to know which of these two, the theoretical or 
the practical side of the reason, is to be regarded as 
primary. Is the will in order to the intelligence, or 
the intelligence in order to the will ? 

Here in religion we meet the same psychological 
problem. It has always been a question whether of 
these two sides of the reason of man shall have the 
priority and the supremacy. Does religion begin in the 
form of light, or in the form of affection and love ? It is 
a most important question indeed — a question of far- 
reaching significance, and of controlling influence for our 
theological thinking, and also for the interests of our 
practical Christian life and conduct. 

In the light of the text, as well also as in the light of 
the best mental science, the priority belongs to the will, 
although men in every age are somehow, and singularly 
enough, ever prone to make far more account of the 
other side, viz., of the intelligence. It is not in the in- 
telligence that the highest dignity of man consists, nor 
is it in the intelligence that the full power and majesty 
of the reason of man appear. It is in the will. There 
is no fact with which we need to be better acquainted 
than this ; for there is none of greater importance for 
the proper understanding of our own wonderful consti- 
tution. 

The will is the fundamental power everywhere. It is 
so in the divine mind, or in the constitution of the di- 
vine being. We must conceive of these two sides of the 



OBEDIENCE THE WAY, ETC. 135 

reason as existing in the constitution of the Godhead ; 
but the passive side (intelligence) does not go before the 
active (the will). The being of God is the product of 
His own free activity. This is an unfathomable mystery, 
of course, which we cannot at all comprehend ; but this 
at least we can plainly see, that God was not brought 
into existence by any causation beyond Himself. He 
comes by His own activity. He is self-created. In the- 
ology this has sometimes been called His aseity. Then, 
too, we cannot conceive of God having been thus 
brought to pass and then merely continuing to ex- 
ist without the continued exercise of His own will. 
God cannot exist passively. His will is fundamental 
for His being. 

What is thus seen to be true of the divine mind abso- 
lutely is also true of the created mind relatively. The 
activity of the will is the first and chief manifestation of 
the reason. Man becomes self-conscious in infancy by 
the power of his will. And this mysterious process we 
repeat every morning of our lives, when by the power 
of the will we awake out of our sleep. This is, of course, 
unfathomable. We cannot bring it within the scope of 
our science ; but undoubtedly awakening takes place by 
a positive act of self-affirmation on the part of the mind. 
This is but one illustration amongst many that might be 
given to show how that reason first manifests itself in 
an act of the will. 

The individual will, however, is not a law unto itself, 
but is bound evermore and always by a wider will exist- 
ing beyond itself. The will encounters the law, and 
without the law the will is false. The relation between 
the two, however, is not mechanical, but free. Only 
when the law is freely embraced and affirmed by the 



136 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

created intelligence, can there be any entrance for the 
spirit of man into the sphere of freedom. It is on this 
ground that the freedom and power of the will depend — 
on being in full harmony with the divine will ; and it is 
in view of this fundamental law of our being that the 
declaration of Christ, as given in the text, holds 
good. 

That declaration stands in a peculiar connection. The 
Jews believed Him unlettered, because He had never 
learned. '' How knoweth this man letters, having never 
learned ? '^ But Jesus in the temple, and in the midst 
of the feast, confronts them and says, '^ My doctrine is 
not mine but His that sent me. If any man will do His 
wilF' — or, as it may be more properly rendered, "if any 
man wills, or is willing to do His will, he shall know of 
the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak 
of myself.'' 

It is one of the most profound declarations of the New 
Testament. For it implies the absolute and unequivocal 
possession of the divine nature by Jesus Christ, the 
proof of which fact depends not (as I have often said) on 
separate texts or passages of Scripture, but is to be 
found rather in the abiding, perpetual consciousness as 
again and again expressed by our Saviour, that His will 
and His thinking were one with the will and the think- 
ing of God. So was He one with the Father. This is 
an overwhelming proof. The evidence for the divinity 
of Christ commonly adduced from proof-texts of Scrip- 
ture, as they are called, must in the end derive all its 
force and significance from this, " My doctrine is not 
mine, but His that sent me." Here is a clear conscious- 
ness of absolute identification with the divine mind. 
Let us now notice certain points in this simple test in 



OBEDIENCE THE WAY, ETC, 137 

the apprehension of religious truth, " If any man wills 
to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." 

It is a test that can be applied to the acquisition of all 
knowledge whatsoever, as we have already to some ex- 
tent seen. The will leads the way in the apprehension 
of all truth. Yet men have a specious and plausible way 
of talking about the acceptance of the truths of the Gos- 
pel as if these could be embraced quite apart from the 
moral side of the question altogether. There are those 
who question the supernatural character of Christy and 
say that the authority of the Gospel can get along very 
well without that. They appeal to the Sermon on the 
Mount as being the highest form of spiritual or religious 
truth ; and they tell us that if we are only somehow per- 
suaded that the body of all truth is to be found there, 
that is all that is necessary, without even considering 
the one great question which lies far back of that — this, 
namely, whether Christ was of divine origin or not. 
This is the leading article in the creed of rationalism- 
The theoretical side of the reason is violently divorced 
from the practical. In opposition to this specious belief 
we say that such a theory is contradicted by the actual 
fact of our own mental constitution, properly considered, 
as it certainly is by this most profound and far-reaching 
declaration of our Saviour's — '^ If any man wills to do 
His will, he shall know of the doctrine." 

Another false conception lies somewhat in the oppo- 
site direction. The practical side of the reason may be 
divorced from the theoretical. There may be the form 
of doing God's will without the substance. The imagi- 
nation of some is that all is well if we have reason to 
think that our life and conduct are right, no matter what 
our creed may be. But our Saviour here says that there 



138 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

must be something more than mere doing. The word 
^^will/' here, is not the auxihary ; it is the principal and 
the most emphatic word in the text. *^ If any man wills/' 
is willing, and remains abidingly willing, *'he shall 
know/' The willing here lies back of the doing, being 
the fixed habit of the soul, and involving the consent of 
the whole man. This with the Saviour was the criterion. 
The knowing comes by the willing. The reigning 
habit of the mind or the soul, in reference to the divine 
mind or will, is the one consideration of chief account in 
the apprehension of divine truth. This grand thought 
our Saviour presents for our consideration over and over 
again, as for example, when He says, ^'If thine eye be 
single ^' — that is, if the inward habit and disposition of 
the soul be right — '' thy whole body shall be full of 
light.'' '' But if the light that is in thee "—that is, if the 
inward, reigning spirit be not in accordance with the 
divine will — " be darkness, how great is that darkness." 
If the will be led away from the divine will, how can 
there be light ? If the eye of the body refuse to see, or 
be turned away from the light of the natural sun in the 
heavens, how can there be light? "lam the light of 
the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in dark- 
ness, but shall have the light of life." So, too, in the 
interview with Nicodemus: ''This is the condemnation 
that hght is come into the world, and men loved dark- 
ness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 
For every one that doeth evil " — that is, the habit of 
whose soul is to do evil — '^hateth the light. But he 
that doeth truth'' — here again it is 'Moing," indicating a 
settled determination or a fixed purpose of the mind and 
heart — '^cometh to the light that his deeds maybe made 
manifest that they are wrought in God," 



OBEDIENCE THE WAY, ETC, 139 

We close with a few brief, practical reflections. 

I. The single eye, then, is all in all. To have our will 
fixed on God, and on the doing of His will, as the reign- 
ing habit of the mind, this is a matter of the highest pos- 
sible moment with us all. 

II. But, there is a drawing here. '' No man cometh 
unto the Father but by me,^' and ''no man cometh to me 
except the Father draw him." We see how our will has 
been bhnded and enfeebled by the fall. And we see also 
what a vain imagination is that which claims that no- 
thing but education and culture are needful for a man, 
trusting in this way to work out the problem of our hu- 
man life. There is no imagination in the mind or heart 
of man more fundamentally false than this. It matters 
not how much culture there may be from the cradle to 
the grave, it never can save men. And yet this miser- 
able falsehood, which enters so largely into much of the 
education, culture and humanitarianism of this age gen- 
erally, is the boasted claim of many to recognition 
and influence. We meet here a wonderful, though a 
sad illustration of that blindness in the understanding' 
which has been superinduced by the fall. Reason left 
to itself, and to the operation of its own laws, never can 
lead toward the divine will; it is forever leading away 
from it. 

From all this we find that the only remedy for the ills 
under which our common humanity is suffering is to be 
found not at all within the range of its own powers. The 
help must always come from a higher source. If any 
man wills to do God's will he shall know of the doc- 
trine. 

September lo^ iS'ji. 



140 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



Cije ^\mXunX\^ cSuntfag after ^xxxixX'q^. 

THE KNOWI.KDGE OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST ALONE. 

JHattt^ki xi. 27. 

" All things are delivered U7ito me of my Father ; and no man knoweth the 
Son but the Father ; neither knoweth atiy man the Father save the Son^ 
and he to whotnsoever the Son will reveal him^ 

The perfection of man's being consists in the perfect 
development of his religious nature, and the great aim of 
all revelation is to bring man to a knowledge of God 
through Jesus Christ His Son. Such a knowledge of 
God, is, in one view, rendered necessary by the demands 
of our own constitution or nature. There is in man a 
three-fold form of consciousness — a consciousness of 
self, of the world, and of God. In the very conception 
or idea of self-consciousness there is a necessity for con- 
sciousness of that which is not self — the outside, external 
world ; and the consciousness of that which is not our- 
selves is quite as original and necessary as the conscious- 
ness of that which is. But alongside of this necessarily 
involved consciousness of the external world, there is in 
every soul an equally necessary and original conscious- 
ness of God. Man has an instinctive sense of absolute 
existence — of an existence, or a Being, above and beyond 
himself and above and beyond the world. Were this 
wanting in the original constitution of the soul, no 
amount of external evidence could bring any man to a 
sense of such an absolute existence. After all that may 
be said upon the subject, and when all the arguments 
men have invented to establish the existence of a God, 



KNOWLEDGE* OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST ALONE. 141 

the great, fundamental, immovable and unanswerable 
argument for God's being will be found to consist in this 
original God-consciousness in us. This sense of God 
is universal, all men have it, heathen as well as Christian. 
On the part of heathenism it is a negative evidence for 
the truth of Christianity ; but of itself it is quite insuffi- 
cient for the purpose of man's perfection ; as we can see 
when we consider that the ancient heathen world, though 
in full possession of this sense of the absolute, yet was 
led further and further into all forms of error, at one time 
into the deification of nature, at another into a deifica- 
tion of human beings. 

The mere sense, or consciousness, of the absolute is 
not enough, therefore, to bring us to a knowledge of 
God. We need an exemplification or manifestation of 
the absolute in some outward form, in order that our 
consciousness of the absolute may assume a form com- 
mensurate with the character of the object. Such a man- 
ifestation we do indeed meet in the natural world, as the 
Psalmist says, '' The heavens declare the glory of God, 
and the firmament sheweth his handy-work ; " but such 
a revelation, whether in external nature, or in our own 
physical and moral constitution, or in the world of his- 
tory, is but partial and relative, and falls immeasurably 
short of what is necessary to a full knowledge of God. 

Our Saviour, in the language of our text, challenges 
our homage to His own person as the only full and per- 
fect manifestation of the being of God. It was in view of 
the fact that not many wise, mighty or learned men had 
comprehended this full manifestation of the being of 
God, and that the simple-minded fishermen-disciples, 
and others in the humble walks of life had apprehended 
Him with a true faith, that He was moved to exclaim, ^* I 



142 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
and hast revealed them unto babes and sucklings. Even 
so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight/' And 
then, as if to show the fulness of His own person, as the 
perfect manifestation of God, He adds, " All things are 
delivered unto me of my Father . . . neither know- 
eth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whom- 
soever the Son will reveal him." 

Observe here how the person of Christ is made to stand 
over against every other revelation of God. " No man 
knoweth the Father save the Son, " — no man ever has 
known, no man ever can know the Father, in any other 
way. All other revelation, without this, is of no avail. 
Men talk of '' looking through nature up to nature's 
God " — but Christ says, '' No man knoweth the Father 
but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
him." 

Observe further that there seems to be implied or sug- 
gested here some sort or degree of inferiority on the part 
of the Son to the Father, the reference being to the histori- 
cal manifestation of the Son in His state of earthly humili- 
ation. But it is also to be particularly observed in this pas- 
sage, as well as in others of similar import, that a relation 
between the Father and the Son is implied as existing in the 
very constitution of the Godhead itself, and prior to all time 
and human history. The very idea of the Father having 
delivered all things to the Son, in order that He might 
be a perfect representation of the Father, implies a 
previous relation between the two. The Father could 
never thus have delivered all things to one not His equal. 
The mere idea of God's having delivered all things in 
this way to Moses, for example, or to Abraham, or even 



KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST ALONE, 143 

to the angel Gabriel, in such way that they might say 
that their knowledge was identical with that of God, is 
blasphemous. In every passage in which Christ claims 
full knowledge of the Father, He also claims a full and 
perfect identity with Him. There is no force in the argu- 
ment drawn from the New Testament against the abso- 
lute divinity of Christ. There could be no delegation 
of such high power and majesty to any creature, no 
matter how high his position may have been. When 
Christ says, '^ All things are delivered unto me of my 
Father," it is to say " I have full capacity to be like God^ 
to be equal with Him." Here is a claim of co-equal ex- 
istence with the Father. Here is the eternal generation 
of the Son. By this only was it possible for Christ to be 
our Mediator, to stand between heaven and earth, God 
and man. ^* All things are mine," He says. The will 
the power, the attributes of God passed over into His 
person as Christ Jesus. It was only in virtue of this re- 
lation that Christ could at all stand among men as their 
deliverer. 

Only deity can be capacious of deity. " As the Father 
hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have 
life in himself The Son is never in the New Testament 
represented as inferior to the Father. He is '' the bright- 
ness of God's glory, and the express image of his per- 
son," and as such He became incarnate as the highest 
revelation of God to man. This is the whole sense of 
the Gospel. The Gospel goes far beyond all other relig- 
ions, none of which has power really to bring God and 
man together any nearer than in that comparatively poor 
and inadequate revelation in the world of nature to which 
we have referred. The presence of God in His Son 
stands unmeasurably above His presence in the world of 



144 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

nature. Christ says, ** I am the way, the truth and the 
life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me/' Oh 
what a depth of meaning in that declaration, " He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father ! '^ In the constitu- 
tion of His own person, as the hving connexion between 
heaven and earth, the highest form of humanity was 
taken up into indissoluble union with absolute divinity. 
It was deity enshrined in humanity ; and Christ thus 
became, absolutely, '^ The Way" — the only way of ap- 
proach to God, and in and through Him only could God 
be known. No one can know the Father save only he 
^'to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." 

The revelation spoken of here, however, is not one of 
doctrine merely. It is deeper than anything purely in- 
tellectual. It involves a common life and fellowship of 
existence. All knowledge of God is, fundamentally and 
in the depths of its origin, intuitional. It does not start 
with self-conscious reflection, but with an intuitional per- 
ception based upon a community of existence. Much 
that is supposed to be an apprehension of divine things 
falls far short of it. We cannot know God, as it were, at 
arms' length — by ratiocination. Such knowledge of God 
lowers Him to the position of a mere creature. God 
cannot at all be apprehended by such external thinking. 
So long as I think I am studying outside of deity, so 
that God shall be to me an object of knowledge, I am de- 
ceiving myself. God cannot be known in that way. 
There must be a union and communion with Him, first 
of all ; and only when we are brought into direct union 
with Him who is the Truth, can we be in such fellow- 
ship with the Godhead that we may know God. In this 
way we can see something of the profound meaning of 
our Saviour's declaration, '* No man knoweth the Father 



KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST ALONE, 145 

save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
him." 

This is the mystery of Christianity. And it was in 
view of the mystery here involved that our Lord ex- 
claimed, ^* I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and 
earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes and suck- 
lings ; " because ^' these things " are beyond the grasp 
of the human mind, beyond the grasp of philosophy, and 
beyond the ken of those who rise to the sublimest heights 
in the wisdom of the world ; and yet they may be and 
are revealed unto babes ! As knowledge enters the mind 
of the babe, by virtue first of all of its living, organic rela- 
tion to the world of humanity and to the world of nature, 
so there can be no true knowing of God except upon the 
basis of an antecedent communion with Him. And this 
simple way of knowing God is possible only in connec- 
tion with the person of Christ. 

We can now see how sublimely grand is the declara- 
tion that follows, and how naturally it springs out of 
what goes before — " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'' — Ye that 
are perplexed in regard to the problem of your own ex- 
istence, and have been dreaming concerning the future 
life, ^' Come unto me ! ^' Nothing more sublime than 
this can be conceived of. It is an overwhelming argu- 
ment. '* Come unto me " — unto the person of Christ ; 
not to His doctrines. His commands or His example, but 
to Himself This is the end of our existence, the key to 
its proper understanding — to bring us forth from the dark 
prison house of our fallen nature into the light and free- 
dom presented in Christ Jesus, the hope of immortality. 

September J J iS6g, 
10 



146 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



Ci)e Ctoentieti^ Si^ntrag after "^xxxkxV^. 

THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 

"^J^i vii. 22. 
'* To the poor the Gospel is preached,*^ 

The immediate occasion for this declaration of our 
Lord was the visit of the disciples of John the Baptist, 
who had, it would seem, come to stand in some doubt 
as to His mission. The significant inquiry, '^ Art thou 
he that should come ? or look we for another ? '' was of 
the nature of a most serious and solemn challenge of the 
ministry of Jesus ; and the equally remarkable reply to 
the inquiry was designed to afford the greatest assur- 
ance, not only to the disciples of John, but also to all 
subsequent ages : " Go your way, and tell John what 
things ye have seen and heard ; how the blind see, the 
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the 
dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." 

Poverty, in the general sense of the term, signifies a 
state of want, wretchedness and misery. The poor may 
be considered as lacking the outward conveniences or 
necessities of life ; but this outward poverty is only a 
figure of one that is more far-reaching and more pro- 
found ; such as the loss of the senses, sickness, trial, be- 
reavement and death, all the consequence of sin. And a 
powerful argument for the truth of the Gospel lies in the 
very significant fact that it alone presents a sufficient 
remedy and cure for poverty in the widest sense of the 
word. It is indeed ^' Glad Tidings " to the poor, and 
it is preached with efficacy just in the proportion that 



THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR, 147 

they are poor to whom it is preached. The divine origin 
and power of the Gospel are manifested in this striking 
fact. The general proposition laid down in the text may 
be established by three or four considerations : 

I. The Gospel is a divine message which is designed 
to reach even to the poor, and to offer them the only 
truly radical cure of their poverty. It is a Gospel to the 
poor ; not to the rich, or the healthy, or the high, or the 
great and noble among men. If it were addressed to 
any of these, it would not be radical enough to reach the 
true origin of the evils from which our humanity suffers. 

In this regard the Gospel presents a most striking 
contrast with the various schemes which men have de- 
vised, from time to time in the course of history, for the 
alleviation of the sufferings of humanity. Such schemes 
originate sometimes in the political world, sometimes 
in the philosophical ; or it may be some educational or 
social device; and each scheme of philanthropy is thought, 
for the time at least, to be all that is needed to set the 
world right. But the great difficulty with all these is 
that they are not radical enough. They may be good 
and do good in one portion of the community, but they 
do not reach to the ground of the evil. The philosophy 
of the ancients was only for the upper classes, the great 
masses of the people not being reached by it, except in 
the most general and indirect way. It reached, even at 
its best estate, only those evils which were superficial. 

Now, over against all these schemes, the Gospel is 
'' Glad Tidings " to the poor (who constitute the great 
body of the race in every age) and not to the rich. It 
would amount to but very little if the upper classes of 
society were to be set right while the masses were left 
in their misery. The Gospel reaches down into the deep 



148 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

and dark abyss of human sin and suffering, even to its 
remotest recesses, because it is deeper, more radical than 
any other cure for human woe that has ever been devised, 
carrying with it the force of a divine origin. Nothing 
else can reach so deep. The Gospel says^ *' Except a 
man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into 
the Kingdom of God/' It proposes itself as the power 
of a new creation as radical as life itself, reaching even 
to the regeneration of the world at large. The more the 
Gospel of Christ is considered, in all its simplicity, the 
more it is seen to include a power adapted to the ne- 
cessities of the race, and the more its divine origin ap- 
pears in this very fact. 

11. An argument for the divine character of the Gos- 
pel appears when we consider its true catholicity or uni- 
versality, whereby it is adapted to our humanity consid- 
ered as a universality. What takes hold of the universal 
must itself be universal. Hence all these schemes which 
we have just now alluded to are eclectic, as the term now 
is, and cannot be universal or catholic. It was but what 
was to be expected that the greater part of the race could 
not come within the scope of the ancient schemes. All 
that philosophy could do was to reach the better classes 
of minds, which included a comparatively very small 
number of men. So all educational and political schemes 
reach only a small portion of the human family. Before 
the time of Christ, politics concerned itself with the cul- 
ture of patriotism, valor or philanthropy. These were 
the great virtues. All men outside of this estate of hu- 
man culture were of a different caste, castaways, barba- 
rians. All that the ancient civilization attempted was to 
reach a certain class. 

Now, in direct contrast with this, the Gospel is con- 



THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR, 149 

stitutionally catholic, universal. The millions and hun- 
dreds of millions in heathen lands, and the millions of 
human beings that are the dregs of society in Christian 
countries ; these- constitute *' the poor," and to these the 
Gospel is addressed. '' Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." " God sent not 
His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that 
the world through him might be saved." These, and 
m.any similar declarations show the adaptation of the 
Gospel to the race considered as a whole. It does not 
propose a salvation ending in a philosophy for the study 
of a few, nor the merely social well-being of certain 
classes, nor even a bare dream of social improvement 
by which matter shall subserve the purposes of mind 
and, as some think, by which the millenium shall be 
ushered in. The Gospel makes no account of these. 
" By one man sin entered into the world, and death by 
sin.'' The curse is universal. It reaches down to the 
very foundations of society, and if it is ever to be re- 
moved at all, the remedy proposed must be commen- 
surate with the malady. We cannot help but see that the 
Gospel goes to the bottom of the curse. It is indeed ob- 
jected by some that the Gospel does not include secular 
objects and pursuits, and that it regards these as acci- 
dental and secondary. Humanitarianism does not re- 
cognize the Gospel because it does not seem to make 
enough account of the outward well-being of men. That 
is no proper objection, however, but only an argument 
for the divine character of the Gospel ; for, while the 
Gospel does not directly address itself to the ameliora- 
tion of these evils (as it undoubtedly would were it of 
human origin) it does reach them indirectly, and is 
designed to cure them most effectually, by going down 



150 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

to that which is more general, and in which they are all 
included, the secret source of all the evils of our hu- 
manity. 

III. The argument acquires additional force when we 
consider the adaptation of the Gospel to the wants of the 
poor to whom it is addressed. It claims to be the sov- 
ereign remedy for the ills from which they suffer, and in 
every age they have been disposed to welcome it. If the 
philosophy of Plato or that of Hegel were presented to 
them, they could not at all understand it. But they 
have a capacity for comprehending the Gospel, which is 
instinctively recognized as being what they need. They 
at once see this, feel it, know it ; and this remarkable 
adaptation of the Gospel to the wants of the poor, and 
the instinctive recognition of the Gospel by the poor as 
being what they need, affords a most powerful argument 
for the divine origin of the Gospel. We need not de- 
velop at length this remarkable adaptation. The Gospel 
alone delivers from an evil conscience, gives joy and 
hope to the poor, in comparison with which all other 
remedial schemes are naught. It presents its claims 
boldly, and with full assurance promises rest and peace 
to the troubled soul. Its language in every age, to the 
oppressed, the despised, the poor, is : ^' Come unto me, 
and I will give you rest." '' I am come, not to call the 
righteous, but sinners to repentance." ^' They that are 
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." 
The Gospel offers itself to those laboring under a 
sense of poverty, both as regards this world and that 
which is to come ; and, as it is suited to their wants, so 
also are they found in every age gladly to respond to its 
challenge, so far as their power to apprehend it may go. 

It is a striking picture which is here presented. On 



THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR, 151 

the one side there is a grand scheme, such as angels de- 
sire to look into, wrought out for the human family by- 
Christ ; on the other side a whole race, groaning and 
heavy-laden. And so soon as these two are brought to- 
gether, they are at once found to be reciprocal, and mu- 
tually complemental. Men find the only complement of 
their poverty in the Gospel of Christ, and this is, indeed, 
a grand argument for its divine character. And this is 
the argument which the poor need. Ninety-nine per- 
sons out of every one hundred need no other proof of 
the Gospel than their own experience. Where the case 
is so universal, how can it be established by any proof 
beyond itself? This is true in the experience of all of 
us. The divine character of Christ rests upon this same 
argument. He cannot be proved by anything outside of 
Himself. He is His own proof to the soul. And so, 
the Gospel being fundamentally adapted to the true needs 
of mankind, it sets the poor in new relations to God, 
giving them power to live in obedience to God's com- 
mands, and to cry, '^ Abba, Father." The argument 
culminates in the success of the Gospel, as seen in the 
history of Christianity. All other religions, all other 
schemes, whether of philosophy or government, have 
failed to present a sufficient remedy. Nothing can ever 
be accomplished by all the power of science. Though 
all the powers of the natural world be mastered, to what 
would it all amount for the cure of the radical misery of 
our fallen life ? 

In conclusion, all poverty, though undoubtedly an 
evil, is nevertheless a means of grace, when properly 
considered. It cannot fail, when rightly used, to sub- 
serve the salvation of the soul. And this is an import- 
ant reflection for lis all. Poverty, as a mere outward 



152 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

privation, even, is a means of grace. We may abuse the 
sacrament, yet the sacrament carries power in itself, 
nevertheless. So with poverty. It is often called a curse, 
when men are dissatisfied with the allotmenlj^ of life ; but 
in the light of the Gospel it is a means of grace, a blessing 
in disguise. It offers to men the occasion of coming near 
to Christ, an occasion which they could not otherwise have. 
Without faith it is a curse; but so soon as men see that 
there is in it a power of bringing them to a reconciliation 
with the Heavenly Father, and of making them submissive 
to His will, they must recognize it not as a curse, but as 
a blessing. Poverty, in one form or another, is sent from 
God, who may indeed also send health and strength and 
riches, which are likewise means of grace to all who 
rightly receive and employ these advantages. But all men, 
in coming to Christ, must be poor ; if not with an out- 
ward poverty, then with an inward. Otherwise they 
cannot possess the kingdom ; for our Saviour says, 
** Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven." 

September J2y i86g. 



CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION, ETC. 153 



W^t Ctoentiet^ Stintrag after Crinitg. 

CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION OF THE SOUL. 

l^attSt^ xi. 28-30. 

" Come unto vie, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly 
in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy^ 
and my burden is light,^^ 

These words may be taken as an invitation addressed 
directly to all such as have become awakened to the fact 
of their sinfulness and are looking about them for help 
and relief. Here they are required to look away from 
themselves, and are challenged to fasten on Jesus Christ 
as the only source of righteousness and salvation. 

In a wider view the text may be regarded as calling 
on all those who suffer in body, mind or outward estate, 
to look to the Lord Jesus as the one great source of all 
security and peace. 

It is not necessary, however, to restrict or limit this 
passage to either the one or the other class. The pas- 
sage contemplates our fallen life in its widest view. 
Whether men are aware of it or not, the condition in 
which we all are by nature is one of poverty and want, 
from which men are, in spite of themselves, impelled to 
seek for deliverance. Our life cannot but be regarded as 
one of toil, labor, conflict, whether it be prosecuted in 
righteousness or in sin. In our natural life there is no 
rest or peace to the human spirit, and it is in view of this 
our natural state, that our Saviour here appeals not only 
to all those who heard Him utter these words, but to all 



154 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

succeeding generations down to the end of time, " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy-laden, and I 
will give you rest." 

We cannot possibly conceive of a more grand and 
majestic position than that which our Saviour here 
assumes, as over against the world of nature and history. 
There is no meaning in the language except as implying 
that the true sense of the world is comprehended in His 
own person, in such a way that He has a right to place 
Himself over against the world and challenge the obedi- 
ence and homage of men in opposition to all other 
attractions whatsoever. '^ Come unto me," as over 
against the world at large, as over against trial and afflic- 
tion, as over against pleasure and sensuality, as over 
against literature, art and science, '' Come unto me," all ye 
that labor in other directions and seek rest from other 
sources, ''and I will give you rest/' 

Looking at the language of the text in this way, we 
see at once that it involves an absolutely overwhelming 
argument for our Saviour's divinity. The language is 
that of a person possessing a full, conscious superiority 
to the whole world. There is a powerful argument 
here (for all those who have the power or disposition to 
apprehend its significance) for the absolute Truth as 
being embodied in the person of Christ. Our Saviour 
could never have been in the calm possession of this 
conscious superiority to the whole world, under its 
widest view, unless He was what He claimed to be — the 
full revelation, the absolute utterance of the most high 
God. 

For no one feels that language such as this ill-befits 
the Saviour's lips. We do not feel that it is too high or 
pretentious. Such language in the lips of any other 



CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION, ETC. 155 

man in all the world would be felt at once to be blas- 
phemy. But, as spoken by Christ, this language 
approves itself to the deepest moral feeling of the world 
in every age. And we have here, therefore, a proof of 
His divinity far beyond that afforded by His miracles or 
the fulfilled prophecies, the one great and convincing 
evidence of His divinity proceeding here as always from 
His own person. 

It is only natural that He should have thus spoken, as 
we can see readily enough when we consider the con- 
nection in which these words were uttered. He had 
been speaking of the privileges of the cities of the plain, 
and denouncing their sin in not having recognized the 
day of their visitation. Immediately upon this follow 
the words, '' At that time Jesus answered and said, I 
thank thee O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent 
and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; 
for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are de- 
livered unto me of my Father : and no man knoweth 
the Son but the Father : neither knoweth any man the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
reveal him." With what overwhelming force does not 
the text follow upon these marvelous words ! '' All 
things are delivered unto me of my Father '' — it would 
not be at all possible to deliver these things to a mere 
creature. He to whom they are delivered must be of a 
nature fully commensurate with His by whom they are 
given. In a word, our Saviour here claims to be abso- 
lutely co-equal with the Father : and it is just in view of 
this co-equality and the immense superiority to the 
whole world as involved in that co-equality, that He 
exclaims with such infinite significance, '' Come unto me 
and I will give you rest." 



156 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

How is it, now, that men are required to come to 
Christ ? What is meant by coming to Christ ? Undoubt- 
edly the reference here is to faith. The exercise of faith 
is an act by which we come to Christ. But this act of 
faith involves certain steps or stages. 

I. It involves, first of all, a consideration of what we 
are, and what the world around us is. So long as men 
are not brought to consider seriously their circumstances 
as they actually are, they cannot be brought to compre- 
hend their miseries, either in a natural or a spiritual 
sense. "They that are whole need not a physician, but 
they that are sick.'' But a consciousness of spiritual 
sickness requires a self-knowledge, as well as an appre- 
hension also of the fleeting and evanescent character of 
the world around us. And not only is the whole world 
vain, but our own being is also vain, under its merely 
natural view, and even also in its spiritual character, 
when this is considered by itself The more we come to 
understand ourselves in this light, the more we come to 
stand aghast at our own nature as something horrible 
and hollow. For we are a world of delusion, disorder 
and darkness, without light and without hope. 

II. All this involves a conviction of sin. This con- 
viction must go so far with us as to amount to an over- 
whelming persuasion. In these circumstances, then, we 
are prepared to turn away from the world to Christ. 
And this is our second point. The call from Christ, in 
the invitation of the text, is " Come away from all this 
misery and woe to Me.'^ Turning implies a movement 
away from something and a movement toward some- 
thing. The first step in the turning, here, is the convic- 
tion of which we have been speaking. Then comes the 
actual turning — this is the second stage : and yet the 



CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION ETC. 157 

two are never separated in actual fact, because it is only 
by the growing apprehension of what Christ is that we 
come at all to understand what our sin and misery is. In 
proportion as we come to apprehend the fulness of life 
in Him, in that proportion precisely do we come to 
understand the vanity and misery of our earthly state. 

It is in this act of turning that the act of faith appears. 
Here there must be a continuous turning from and a 
turning to. In the words of our catechism, there must 
be '' a dying of the old man and a quickening of the new 
man." Yet these two do not stand apart from each 
other. They are in reality mutually complemental and 
necessary, being opposite sides of the same act. There 
is no turning from the world except we receive Christ 
into the affections. The two sides of faith, here, form a 
single act. The positive side lies with Christ, the nega- 
tive with the world. There is no true negation of the 
world that does not arise from the power of a higher 
principle. 

Hence men have never truly succeeded in renouncing 
and forsaking the world by any schemes of philosophy. 
Hence, also, the law as given in the hands of Moses was 
not sufficient to lead men to a true and lasting rest and 
peace. There is needed for this purpose an actual 
coming down of the Godhead into our humanity, in 
order that our humanity may be lifted up above the 
vanity in which its life is ever flowing. And this coming 
into our humanity must be personal on the part of God, 
so that in turning away from themselves and the world, 
men are challenged to turn to the actual person of the 
Son of God. We are to come to Him ; not to His words, 
or His doctrine, but to Himself And this we are to do 
continually, in the way of faith. All can come, as all are 



158 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

invited to come — high and low, rich and poor, old and 
young. Even little children can do this. 

III. The third fact to which we invite attention is 
some consideration of the office performed by the means 
of grace in this coming to Christ. The movement of the 
soul toward Christ, here, is of course spiritual through- 
out, holding in the region of the spirit of man. But 
faith is not a mere abstraction. Christianity is some- 
thing historical and not magical. It reaches down into 
the actual world in which we live : and faith involves not 
only an inward but also an outward act in reference to 
the person of Christ. Provision is made for this in the 
Church by the means of grace, which are media by 
which our faith is led to high spiritual results. The act 
of coming to Christ is not completed except by the be- 
lieving use of these means. It is in vain to believe in a 
power to save unless we also make due and proper 
account of the means by which this salvation is to be- 
come real to us, instead of being a mere ghostly abstrac- 
tion. "Come unto me^' implies outward means of 
coming as well as an inward disposition to come. Many 
make use of the outward side without any spiritual 
profit, because the means of grace are made use of in a 
merely outward and mechanical way. Nevertheless it is 
an error on the other side to say that these means are of 
no account. We are undoubtedly to use means, must 
use means, if Christianity is to be anything more to us 
than a mere Gnostic abstraction ; but with these means 
we are to have such an inward spiritual apprehension of 
Christ through the Holy Ghost as shall make them truly 
effectual for their high ends and purposes. " If any 
man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His." 
This entering into the Spirit of Christ is what constitutes 



CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION, ETC. 159 

an effectual coming to Him, and it is only in this way that 
the promised rest can be received. We must have the 
spirit^ the mind of Christ — the spirit of self-denial and 
self-renunciation. *' He that loseth his life for my sake 
shall find it.'' '' Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
ground and die, it abideth alone." Thus are we to 
** learn " of Him, not of the world : we are to learn 
many a lesson which seems hard enough to the flesh, 
but the cheering word is *' My yoke is easy and my 
burden is light." 

Finally, Christ says in the way of a most glorious 
promise, **I will give you rest." Wherein consists this 
rest ? It is begun in this life, but will be completed 
fully only in the life that is to come ; and it consists, first 
of all, in a sense of rightness in regard to God. Our life 
and happiness in this world (so far indeed as we can re- 
gard true happiness as attainable here) depend upon the 
harmonious working together of our entire organization, 
physical and spiritual, toward their own proper end and 
purpose. That is what we mean by health, in the widest 
sense of the word — a perfect harmony of the several 
parts of organic life. We know what health is, not so 
much by having it as by not having it ; by passing 
through sickness and then recovering. In every sick- 
ness there is a crisis, a turning point. The passing of 
that crisis is an unspeakable blessing, for now the princi- 
ple of order has again begun to prevail. 

There is something like this in regard to the souL 
Sin is a sickness in the soul, a lack of harmony, disorder, 
confusion, so that the soul of fallen man is like " the 
troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up 
mire and dirt." Where the fundamental, constitutional 
law of a man's being is violated, how can there be rest 



160 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

or peace for him ? His life is out of harmony with itself, 
being turned away from its ultimate end and purpose 
and fastened back upon itself. 

Now, the very act of coming to Christ, though weak 
and feeble enough in the outstart, is a turning-point in 
the disease, a crisis in the great sin-sickness of the soul, 
a decision by which Christ is acknowledged and the 
world cast off and disowned : it is an act by which Christ 
becomes the loadstar of a man's existence. Though at 
first there is no perfect harmony in the soul when that 
step is taken, and all around still seems confusion and 
darkness, yet there springs up to such a man a light on 
the tempest-tossed sea of life, it may be away in the dis- 
tance, yet still a star of hope rejoicing the soul. The 
confused life now begins to revolve, like the stars in 
their orbits, around the absolute Good and Right. The 
simple act of turning to Christ is itself at once some- 
how felt to be an act of rest and peace, a sense of re- 
turning health which no power on earth besides can 
give. 

This sense of rightness in the soul is, at the same time, 
the beginning of an inward emancipation from the power 
of the world, an emancipation which cannot, in any man- 
ner whatsoever, be secured by any other power.* Science, 
Art, Morality, Culture, Education — in a word all human- 
itarian efforts of whatsoever kind they be, no matter how 
high their claims may be, must most hopelessly and 
lamentably fail at last to give rest or peace to the 
troubled soul. And they who look for help in any of 
these directions are cheated at last as with the hollow 
mockery of a dream. It is with them "even as when a 
hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth ; but he 
awaketh, and his soul is empty : or as when a thirsty 



CHRIST THE ONLY SATISFYING PORTION, ETC. 161 

man dreameth, and behold he drinketh; but he awaketh, 
and behold he is faint." 

At the same time, also, we need to bear in mind that 
the perfect rest of the soul which is involved in this com- 
ing to Christ cannot be attained in this world, but will be 
reached only in that world which is to come. 

October 22, i8yi. 



II 



162 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 



Cije Ctoentg^tljirtr SttnliaB after Crinitg. 

se:arching the scriptures. 

3(o!)Tt V. 39-40. 

** Search the Scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they 
are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might 
have life J* 

These words were addressed to the unbelieving Jews. 
Their lack of faith in the person of the Saviour was cer- 
tainly not owing to a want of evidence. They had the 
testimony of John the Baptist, who was sent to them as 
a special witness of Christ. But they had even greater 
witness than this : for our Saviour says expressly that He 
had greater witness than that of John, viz., the works 
which He did : and the appeal which he here makes is 
to the self-evidencing power of His works. This evidence, 
as coming forth from His own person, far exceeded in 
weight and authority any witness that John could possibly 
have borne. The works of Christ bare witness that the 
Father had sent Him. The authentication here was not 
of an outward, external character, as was that of the 
descending dove. The evidence here is abiding and not 
temporary, addresses itself to the inward sense and not 
to the outward eye: and that which caused this authenti- 
cation to fail of its object lay not with Christ, but with 
the unbelieving Jews themselves. " Ye have neither 
heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And 
ye have not his word abiding in you." This was the 
true secret of their failure to receive Christ. Had there 
been an inward harmony between their minds and the 



SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES, 163 

divine mind, they would at once have acknowledged the 
claims of the Saviour. That they did not dp so was a 
proof of the absence of all such harmony. Then follows 
the text. 

It is commonly thought that the meaning of the text 
is that all who search the Scriptures will find the truth. 
But the Saviour here means to teach something quite 
different from this, viz., that unless first of all the mind 
of God be in him who reads the Scriptures, he will not 
find the truth. The Jews did search the Scriptures most 
diligently, and yet did not thereby attain to a knowledge 
of the truth. " Search the Scriptures " — or, as it should 
be more properly translated, " Ye do search the Scrip- 
tures '' — " for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and 
they are they which testify of me." And yet, although 
these Jews, learned in the law, did most diligently search 
the Scriptures, and although these Scriptures did every- 
where testify of Christ, yet when He appeared amongst 
them they did not recognize Him. Where was the fault? 
In their searching of the Scriptures, or in God manifest 
in the flesh ? 

There is no truth more important than this, that the 
study of the Scriptures depends on the disposition of the 
mind of the student. If the mind that seeks for the 
truth be not like '' the single eye," of which the Saviour 
elsewhere speaks, then all will be darkness. The Scrip- 
tures may be studied in the interest of a false religion : 
there may be no sympathy with the absolute truth to 
begin with, and then the Scriptures will only be a savor 
of death unto death and not of life unto life. Of what 
account was it that these Jews did search the Scriptures, 
so long as there was in them no sympathy with the divine 
mind ? They searched for the truth with no heart to 



164 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

obey the truth, or even to accept it, when found. ^* Ye 
will not come unto me that ye might have life." If they 
could not understand Him, they could not understand 
the Scriptures. The great difficulty was in their will. 
'' If any man will — is willing to — do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine/^ Without placing himself in a 
posture of preliminary subordination of the will to the 
mind of God, no man can ever attain to a knowledge of 
the truth. 

The text implies that man has a want of life. We have 
physical, intellectual, moral life, but all this falls far short 
of the proper conception of life. Life, in the true sense, 
can come only from Christ, the fountain-source of all life. 
'' Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." What 
the Jews expected was salvation by doctrines or laws ; 
but what all men need is not doctrine or laws for the out- 
ward conduct, but life ; and without this all doctrines and 
all laws are of little account. 

Why is it that, in the days of our Saviour as also in 
our own, men will not come to Christ ? 

I. They have no sense of their misery and want. The 
want of such sense is the result of moral death, involving 
both moral and intellectual darkness. Such persons will 
not come to Christ because they have no lively sense of 
their want. '^ They that are whole need not a physician, 
but they that are sick." 

II. Men may, to a certain extent be brought to feel 
their need, and yet be prone to believe that their disease 
need only be partially cured. When men first become 
sensible of their want of righteousness and the necessity 
of pardon, the first tendency of the mind is not toward 
Christ, because the cure to be found in Him is too radical, 
and does not at all agree with their great self-love. The 



SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES, 165 

mind is not ready for a complete self-renunciation. Such 
men become moral ; submit themselves to doctrines and 
precepts, and hope to be saved. So long as any hope 
can be drawn from themselves in any way, men will not 
come to Christ. 

IIL The act of coming to Christ necessarily involves 
the most radical change that can possibly be wrought in 
a man's existence. ^^ Except a man be born again he 
cannot see the kingdom of God." '' If any man come 
to me, and hate not his father and mother ... he cannot 
be my disciple." This is the very hardest service to 
which the human spirit can be put. Men will sacrifice 
property and submit to much personal inconvenience to 
establish a self-righteousness, but when the full claims of 
the Gospel come, and they are asked to forsake all to 
follow Christ, then comes the struggle. So also men may 
be powerfully awakened to their need of salvation, and 
yet fail of attaining to it. The human spirit can be made 
ready for such a renunciation only by the power of God. 

In St. Luke's Gospel we are told that many would have 
followed Christ, but when He said, *' Foxes have holes, 
and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath 
not where to lay his head," they hesitated. *' Lord, suffer 
me first to go and bury my father," was the plea of one; 
but our Lord said, " Let the dead bury their dead,'* for 
this request to go and bury his father was only an excuse 
for a present, immediate renunciation of all in following 
the Saviour. Another said, " Lord, I will follow thee ; 
but let me first go and bid them farewell which are at 
home at my house." But this also was an excuse for 
immediate obedience. 

How full of significance, how truly expressive are not 
these simple passages! Among the other truths and 



166 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

lessons which they convey, we see this : that the person 
of our Lord is of infinitely greater weight and authority 
than all external argument or proof. His authority is 
self-authenticating. He is His own argument. May we 
ever be able to exclaim with the disciples, when our 
Lord asked them whether they too would go away from 
Him, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life! " 

October ^, i86g» 



THE UNBROKEN COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, 167 



THE UNBROKEN COMMUNION OI^ THE SAINTS. 

W^t (ficoj^pd for li&t 30a2— Xt. JEattt^bj ix. 18-26. 

" While he spake these things unto them^ behold there came a certain ruler ^ 
and worshipped him^ saying^ My daughter is even now dead ; but come 
and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live,* ' 

We enter now upon the closing section of the Church 
Year. The Church Year, considered as a whole, may be 
regarded as falling into two grand divisions. In the first 
half of the Church Year we have presented for our con- 
sideration the leading objective facts of redemption, from 
the birth of our Lord to the coming of the Holy Ghost 
on the day of Pentecost. In the second half, which 
follows a somewhat parallel course, we have the subjective 
side as the leading theme, the Scripture lessons and the 
collects having chiefly in view the work of redemption as 
this is carried forward in the life and experience of the 
believer. These two orders are in a certain sense par- 
allel, and yet under another view, the second is the 
reverse of the first. The first begins with the birth of 
Christ, and following the leading facts of His life and 
ministry, reaches its culmination in His ascension and 
glorification at the right hand of the Father, thus pro- 
ceeding from the less to the more perfect, and following 
the course of the sun in the heavens at this season of the 
year. The second grand division of the Church Year, 
on the other hand, begins as it were above, and then in a 
steadily advancing process seems to come down, being a 
continual letting down of the higher into the lower life. 



168 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

In that way the movement corresponds to the movement 
or progress of decay in our natural life which is ever 
fading, and growing older, and passing away. In this 
way, it might seem indeed as if the second half of the 
Church Year were in direct contrast with the first, if not 
indeed in conflict with it, but it is not so. One can 
easily see that the two are mutually complemental. The 
latter half of the Church Year in reality makes room 
for, and indeed by its very nature, demands the former ; 
for it is only when old things are thus passing away that 
room can be made for all things to become new by the 
coming in of a new and higher life. The new life is thus 
ever advancing and growing while the old is receding 
and decaying. In the order of the Church Year we find 
something of a correspondence with the order of the 
natural year, in the outward visible world, in which after 
the season of the harvest, there is a continued and ever 
increasing decline and decay, all nature drawing in her 
energies and powers, in order to make room for the 
advent of the season of the spring. 

We stand, now, in this latter half of this great season, 
having come nigh unto the end of the Church Year. At 
the same time also we are in the midst of the decline and 
fall of the great and mysterious world of nature. All 
colors, all sounds and objects at this season of the year 
conspire to remind us that all nature is doomed to per- 
ish, and that we too, as comprehended in the general 
system of nature, are passing away. We cannot help 
feeling that — cannot avoid that sense. The feeling enters 
into our poetry, and forces itself irresistibly upon the 
minds and hearts of men everywhere. It is felt by the 
uncultured as well as the refined and educated, by the 
heathen as well as by the Christian world. In harmony 



THE UNBROKEN COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, 169 

with this feeling arising from a contemplation of nature 
at this season of the year, that portion of the Church 
Year in which we presently stand is calculated very 
strikingly and forcibly to impress us with the same feel- 
ing, viz., that we are fading and passing away ; but the 
Church Year here does for us what no contemplation of 
nature can ever accomplish — it opens the way for the in- 
coming of a higher life. 

In this way Christian experience, as something infin- 
itely superior, rises above the merely pagan, natural 
feeling which men experience when they look on the 
world of nature and are sadly sensible that, beautiful 
and noble though it be, it is after all doomed to decay 
and is rapidly passing away. We look for " a new 
heaven and a new earth/' We can see this strong, 
positive Christian sentiment prevailing in the Gospel and 
Epistle lessons, and especially in the collects employed 
at this season of the Church Year. We see it here, for 
example, in the Gospel for the day, in the case of the 
ruler's daughter, and in the healing of the woman hav- 
ing the issue of blood. This Gospel lesson is designed 
to bring home to us the feeling of Christ's superior power 
as contrasted with the poverty and frailty of nature 
within us and around us. Were there nothing to look 
to or to rely on other than this mere frame of nature 
around us, there could be no hope for a new and higher 
life beyond. Hence in the Gospel lesson for the day, 
the fading of the old life makes way for the coming of 
the new. 

We have the same thought, also, in the Epistle lesson 
for the day, (Col. i. 9-14) '^ For this cause we also, since 
the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to 
desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his 



170 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

willj in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye 
might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being 
fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowl- 
edge of God, strengthened with all might, according to 
his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering 
with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which 
hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of 
the saints in light : who hath delivered us from the pow- 
er of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom 
of his dear Son." 

In these sublime words of the apostle we have pre- 
sented to us such a triumph of the spirit over nature as 
is possible nowhere else but under the power of the Gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ. And, what makes this triumph all 
the grander and more marvelous, is the fact that it is a 
victory over nature here and now, and that it is not post- 
poned to some far off and future day. In the collect, also, 
in short compass, we have the same thought expressed — 
the misery of our present fallen life, and the glorious hope 
and the present reality of a new and higher life, whereby we 
are assured that ^' If our earthly house of this tabernacle be 
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made 
with hands J eternal in the heavens!' 

The Church of all ages has at this time commemorated 
'' The Last Things," Death and the Judgment. Through 
a succession of Sundays the same theme runs, drawing 
us away from this life to things eternal, and so inviting 
us to communion with the saints gone before, who are 
now awaiting us in the kingdom of light, It was out of 
this feeling of our continued and unbroken fellowship 
with the blessed saints who are gone before, that a par- 
ticular festival in the Church Year was set apart as early 
as the ninth century — the festival of ''AH Saints." The 



THE UNBROKEN COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, 171 

festival has gone out of use in the Protestant Church, for 
good reasons, no doubt; and yet we are nevertheless 
bound to see in it a most profound meaning. The 
Church is bound to keep up an active sense of "the 
communion of the saints." The festival of "All Saints** 
is well calculated to keep alive a sense of such commu- 
nion ; and there can be little doubt that, as a more 
churchly feeling comes to assert itself, there will be a 
resuscitation of this festival. We can easily see the im- 
portance of such a festival in which the Church below 
recognizes one communion in Christ for all saints, at 
least in two important respects : 

I. It is adapted to meet the common natural want of 
the human spirit in regard to those who have died and 
passed away. The Church Year is not so arranged as 
to ignore that feeling. The desire to keep up a commu- 
nion of some kind with departed loved ones is a natural, 
a universal feeling, found in all times and ages. This 
feeling Christianity takes up and makes provision for. 
The social sentiment is one of the grandest distinctions 
of our human life. We cannot separate ourselves even 
from those who are dead and gone. And just in this 
feeling do we find one of the strongest arguments for 
our immortality. Even in the heathen world is this felt, 
and of course where the natural life is cultivated, as it is 
in all Christian and civilized countries, that feeling be- 
comes stronger still, and demands a satisfaction. In this 
way we are exalted above the animal. We are, by con- 
stitution, social. No man is a man, nor can he be said 
to have the feeling of a man, except as his life is inter- 
woven with the lives of others. 

Now, there is no reason why this feeling should not 
be taken up by Christianity. The few short years of 



172 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

social life we pass here on earth with humanity are not 
enough. To say that this law of our life, that ever 
reaches out thus to such sociality, is forever and forever 
cut off by death is against all reason and philosophy. 
Hence it is that we rear monuments over the graves of 
our dead, reminding us of their presence, and giving us 
the feeling that they are not gone forever, but in some 
way or other are here present with us still. 

There were, in the early Church, festivals in remem- 
brance of the dead, which were in the nature and partook 
of the character of sacramental services, more or less ; 
and these were undoubtedly the historical ground for 
the single festival of All Saints." We said a moment 
ago that this festival began in the ninth century, but the 
idea of it was active from the very beginning. There 
was, in the early Church, a disposition to hold this com- 
munion with the saints very prominent, but as these 
observances were at first scattered through the year, and 
so found inconvenient, one day was set aside in which 
the whole Church throughout the world was brought to 
recognize the union of "All Saints" on earth and in 
heaven. 

II. There is an actual demand for some such kind of 
public worship. It is demanded for the support of our 
faith. Faith is not mere thought. No doctrinal knowl- 
edge can be sufficient, nor the exercise of any power or 
faculty of the soul that does not bring before us Christ, 
as a living presence incarnate, so that we can say, ''Thou 
art the Christ." The whole Christian life depends on 
that kind of faith. It unites us with Christ. *' This is 
the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath 
sent." No other sentiment will do, for that is the bond 
of union and direct felt contact with Christ. Now, faith 



777^ UNBROKEN COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, 173 

in Him does not preclude faith in His redeeming work. 
He is not to be regarded as isolated, or as in any wise 
standing aloof from His people. Some seem to think 
that it detracts from the dignity of our Lord to believe 
in the Church, which is '^ his body," we are told, '* the 
fulness of him that filleth all in all." His life is ever 
flowing forth into the Church, of which He is the ani- 
mating power, the ever-living Head. What an organ- 
ism that would be, in which the head should stand iso- 
lated and separate from the members ! The head is the 
head just because it stands in union with the members. 
Our Lord Jesus Christ is not sundered from the Church 
at present in the world. We cannot, consequently, at 
all truly believe in Christ without at the same time be- 
lieving in His Church, in which His glorified life is ever 
manifesting itself. 

This thought, however, must extend also to the saints 
in heaven. The Church on earth is but a small part of 
the Church ; and those departed are in the same relation 
to the Church as before. As we cannot believe in Christ 
without believing in His Mystical Body here below, nei- 
ther can we believe in Him without believing also in the 
communion of saints above. We are to believe in it. No 
mere thought will do, here again as before. A faith is 
necessary. If we do not believe in the Church above, 
we do not believe in the Church below. We cannot be- 
lieve in a fragment of the Church any more than in a 
fragment of a body. This, of course, transcends the 
natural understanding — all here is a sublime mystery for 
the apprehension of faith. 

The cultivation of sympathy with departed believing 
spirits is a complement of our faith in Christ. We can- 
not believe in the Head without believing in the body. 



174 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

And it is not unreasonable to think that our departed 
friends are affected by our sympathy here. There is 
such a feehng in the Christian heart which will not be 
ignored and cannot be crushed out. However this may 
be, the cultivation of such a feeling is much for us. It 
won't do to say that we need no circuitous help from the 
saints, but that we must go straight to Christ Himself. 
That sounds well ; but when we come to see in the 
kingdom of grace a real economy, then do we come to 
feel that we do need the sympathy of those gone before 
us as well as of those still with us in the body here on 
earth. What should we say of that kind of Christianity 
which should profess to have no need of sympathy and 
fellowship with believers here ? That should say we 
have all we need in Christ ? Our human life can't be 
made complete except in a social form, and how should 
it be completed in Christianity, which is its highest form, 
independently of all social feeling and social relation- 
ship? In proportion as we meditate on our friends 
gone before, we find ourselves drawn away from the 
vanity of the things in this world to the abiding reality 
of things unseen and eternal. *' Wherefore, seeing we 
are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, 
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so 
easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that 
is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and fin- 
isher of our faith.^^ 

November ^^ i8yi. 



CHRISl THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF FAITH, 175 



Cf)e Cf)irt 5unt>ag before atJbent. 

THE PERSON OF CHRIST THE CENTRAI. OBJECT OF 

FAITH. 

lotrt vi. 28-29. 

" Then said they unto him^ What shall we do^ that we might work the works 
of God ? Jesus answered and said unto them^ This is the work of God^ 
that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.''^ 

Here we have the sense of the Gospel in a single 
proposition, and that from the lips of our Saviour Him- 
self In order to understand rightly what this proposi- 
tion means, it is necessary to observe first, the implied 
and actual contrast here presented between the revela- 
tion of God through His Son, and all knowledge of God 
acquired simply by the natural reason. We are required 
to believe on Him whom God hath sent, that is, on 
Jesus Christ, His Son, whose person is the most perfect 
manifestation of the being of God ; but in this require- 
ment there is an implied reference to the revelation of 
God in the world of nature. That there is such a revela- 
tion we see in the Bible — ''The heavens declare the 
glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy- 
work." St. Paul says that the heathen were without ex- 
cuse : '* because when they knew God they glorified him 
not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in 
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." 
And it is with a quiet reference to this outward manifes- 
tation of God's being and presence in the world, that our 
Saviour exclaims, '' This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on him whom he hath sent." That such a 



176 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

work and such a belief might be rendered possible, it 
was needed that there should be something further than 
that revelation which exists in the world of nature. A 
new manifestation must be made from heaven. God's 
being and presence must be brought to confront men in 
a, manner different from that with which men had pre- 
viously been acquainted. 

This is the idea of revelation, in the Bible sense of the 
word. It presents itself in the character of a progressive 
movement, beginning with the fall and carried forward 
by the patriarchs and prophets to the final and full rev- 
elation in the person of Christ. This movement widens 
as it advances, and consists not merely in words, but in 
acts and deeds. God manifested Himself to Noah before 
the flood, to Moses, Abraham, and to the later prophets ; 
and such a manifestation in every case involved an act 
on the part of God. It was a stepping out from eternity, 
so to speak, on God's part into the bosom of our human- 
ity, an inbreathing of Himself into human existence. 

All this however, was but a preparation for the one 
full revelation of Himself when He sent His Son into the 
world. But this sending of His Son was not like the 
sending of an angel down from heaven to earth, as the 
angel Gabriel, for example, was sent to Zacharias to an- 
nounce the birth of John the Baptist, or to the Virgin 
Mary to announce the incarnation of the Son of God. In 
Jesus of Nazareth there was " the brightness of God's 
glory and the express image of his person.^' There was 
in Him the actual living union of the divine and the 
human natures. The incarnation was thus the highest 
possible revelation, the culmination of the whole process 
and movement of all preceding revelation, and of all 
previous revelations considered as more or less definitely 



CHRIST THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF FAITH. 177 

marked stages in the one continuous and unbroken line 
of revelation, which were foreshadowings of that which 
was full and final in the person of Christ. On this 
ground Christ proclaimed Himself **The light of the 
world," " The way, the truth and the life." It was 
because of this that He declared, " No man cometh unto 
the Father but by me." And again, " No man hath 
seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." 
And yet again, '* Have I been so long time with you, 
and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." That shows what was 
in Christ, and how He transcended immeasurably all that 
revelation of God which is in the world of nature, and all 
preceding revelation made by the agency of prophets and 
holy men of old. 

" He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.^^ All 
religion, then, culminates in an apprehension of this reve- 
lation, in knowing Christ, and in knowing God in Christ. 
All true Christianity resolves itself into the knowing, not 
of the doctrines of Christ, nor of passages of the Bible, 
nor even of the whole of the Bible, but of Christ Himself 
as the full and final manifestation of God. The knowledge 
of the Bible and of doctrines comes afterward. If we 
imagine that by the Bible, or by texts of Scripture, or by 
picking out the doctrine of justification by faith, and by 
studying any or all of them, we have Christianity, we 
only miserably deceive ourselves. We must first be in 
Christ, who is Alpha and Omega. '* This is eternal life, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom thou hast sent." Christ here means to join 
together these two, the knowing of Christ and the know- 
ing of God. But the naturalist says — " that they might 

12 



178 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

know thee, the only true God and " — the constitution of 
the world ! But Christ came from above, not from 
beneath. He is the great and true missionary from the 
supernatural home of Jehovah. Hence the Apostle St. 
John says, '' We know that the Son of God is come " — 
because His presence was a full manifestation of God. 
^^ We know " — we do not think, merely — '' We know that 
we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. 
And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath 
given us an understanding that we may know him that 
is true ; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son 
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 
This is plain language. The possession of eternal life 
depends upon a knowing by faith, and not upon a know- 
ing by thinking. The natural philosopher founds it on 
God-consciousness, but so far as God comes to be known 
to him at all, it is by speculation, by ratiocination, by 
scientific processes. But if revelation be supernatural, 
we must have a supernatural organ to apprehend it, to 
know God : which organ is faith. Faith is indispensable for 
the apprehension of supernatural and eternal things. It 
is the foundation or ground for knowing God. Hence 
the Saviour says, "' This is the work of God, that ye 
believe.^' — The work is not some speculation or theory 
or doctrine about God, but such a faith in Him as shall 
lead to such a knowledge of Him as we can acquire in 
no other manner whatsoever. 

Now, under this universal view of the proposition, 
there are two general thoughts involved, seemingly of an 
opposite character, but really opposite only in the sense 
that they are on opposite sides of the same truth — 

I. The proposition excludes any work of ours as being 
good for the purposes of our salvation. The Jews asked. 



CHRIST THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF FAITH. 179 

^' What shall we do that we might work the works of 
God?" meaning thereby the ordinary works of morahty. 
The answer of our Saviour plainly implies that no other 
work is co-ordinate with that of '* believing on him whom 
he hath sent." Morality there may be without faith, 
but it cannot minister to salvation. So it is with our 
natural morality, our common human self-sacrifice, and 
even zeal for religion. As St. Paul says, a man '' may 
bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and give his body 
to be burned/^ and yet if he have not charity, '* it profiteth 
him nothing." 

II. On the other hand, however, it is wrong to suppose 
that this work means nothing more than merely to 
believe. That would be a wrong view of justification by 
faith — a making of the means an end. Some talk as if 
it were a purely magical act on the part of heaven by 
which they are set in right relation to God. And some- 
times men take the ground that being justified by faith 
there is no need of good works or morality. That is 
an abstract view of justification by faith, and is a grand 
heresy. There is no dead justification like that in the 
whole economy of salvation. Justification is a creative 
power, a divine thought, which becomes a part of a 
man's being, a germ of a new order of life. God sends 
forth His Spirit into our hearts, ^^ whereby we cry, Abba, 
Father.'^ Faith calls forth love as a response to the 
benevolence of heaven. Faith renews the soul so that 
it may exercise patience in the race. Our Saviour's ex- 
pression, '' This is the work of God," takes in all other 
works. Humility, love, temperance in all things, become 
Christian graces. But outside or independently of 
Christianity, these can never become such. In this case 
they tend only to health and happiness in this world. 



180 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

In this respect good works are related to faith as are the 
limbs and fruit of a tree to the germ which produced it. 

Out of the many practical lessons which we may here 
learn, we can notice only two or three. 

The first — which is very important — is, that we can 
now see what is the fundamental power in our Christian 
experience, without which there can be no title to the 
name Christian. That power rests in something beyond 
ourselves, not in anything in ourselves. This is very 
plain and simple, and yet it is a most important distinc- 
tion in theology, and in all experimental religion. 

Christian experience and personal activity are indeed 
facts which may not be ignored. There must be repent- 
ance. Believing is an effort of the will, and often 
requires a great struggle. Our Christian life is often 
compared to a battle, or a race requiring the greatest 
endurance and exertion. Our Christian life is indeed 
intensely subjective, and can go forward only in us, and 
by our hearty co-operation and our vigorous activity. 
We make all account of experimental piety by which 
men take the kingdom of heaven by violence. 

But it is, nevertheless, a most sad mistake to suppose 
that Christianity consists in feelings, and in inward states 
or frames of the mind. It is sometimes thought that by 
passing through an inward process, by feeling as if sus- 
pended over a yawning abyss of perdition and ruin, 
relief may be found for the troubled soul. This state of 
mind is always followed by a reaction, by a collapse, and 
this makes room for an experience or sensation of 
enlargement; then the imagination comes in — and this is 
called conversion. Now, we do not mean to say that 
such experiences are always fallacious and unreliable. 
What we are concerned to know, in judging of such 



CHRIST THE CENTRAL OBJECT OF FAITH, 181 

cases, is this — what is the ground or foundation on which 
such experiences rest? "Beloved," says St. John, 
'^ believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether 
they are of God : because many false prophets are gone 
out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God : 
every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in 
the flesh is of God." This brings us to the considera- 
tion of the essential point here, that the primary and 
moving power in every believer's experience must lie 
outside of the believer, not as doctrine but as the personal 
Christ. '^ Every spirit that confesseth that Christ is 
come " — and that consists not in a notion, or in an imag- 
ination, but in a steady and unwavering faith. There 
is no faith where people cannot tell what the object of 
faith is. Without faith, imagination is all. Having no 
faith, what do people believe in? First, they believe they 
are sinners. But, as we have seen in the case of faith, 
it requires a supernatural power to believe that. What 
then is faith concerned with, in the supposed case? 
Why, next they believe that if they become converted 
they will be saved: but that belief again rests only on a 
natural and not at all upon a supernatural ground. Last 
of all, having undergone a certain state of feeling, they 
come to experience a reaction in the nature of a 
pleasurable state which, with psychological necessity, 
follows all such feelings, and they then substitute this 
pleasurable state for faith ! But, in all this, where is the 
object on which to rest faith? Faith must have an object; 
and that object must be supernatural; it must come from 
above, not from below, from heaven not from earth. 
That object we find only in that revelation which God 
has made of Himself in the person of His Son. The 
only object of Christian faith is Christ. And you must 



182 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

believe on Him^ not on His works ^part from Him, as 
objects of faith. A man may say, ^'I believe in the 
atonement,'' or again, " I believe in the inspiration of the 
Scriptures" — yet, if he does not believe first of all in 
the incarnation, as the full and final manifestation of God 
in the person of His Son, he cannot truly believe in any 
doctrine. He must begin at the beginning : his faith 
must begin with the root, the origin and source of all. 
This is simple enough, yet it is often lost sight of 
Jesus Christ is Himself the object of all Christian faith. 
We do not mean to say that faith has but one object, 
viz: Christ in the incarnation. Faith has to do with 
all that follows the incarnation, and all that grows forth 
naturally from it, as set forth in the Creed. Believing 
in that, you must and will believe also in The Holy 
Ghost, and the Church, which with all the other super- 
natural facts in the Creed, are mysteries for faith. As we 
come to an apprehension of the meaning of an object of 
faith, so we come to see the difference between faith and 
a notion or imagination. This act of faith involves an 
apprehension of Jesus Christ. In this way we learn 
rightly to esteem the Apostles' Creed, which was the 
expression of the faith of the Christian Church in the 
first centuries. And in this way also we can understand 
the necessity that the various articles of the Creed should 
occupy the place they do. The Creed cannot be turned 
around in any way. It must be as it is, all the articles 
springing forth from the person of Christ, as the radii 
from the centre of a circle. The Creed is the norm of 
our faith, and by it, our faith may be tested, and 
strengthened. There is no other way: we must fall in 
with the plan of God, as set forth in the Creed, and as 
sanctioned by the custom of the Church in allages. 

November 7, i86g. 



THE VOICE OF WISDOM, 183 



Cfje ^econtr ^untiag ISefore atibent. 

THK VOICE OF WISDOM, 
^roitriis viii, I-IO. 

" Doth not Wisdom cryf And Understanding put forth her voice? She stand- 
eth in the top of the high places^ by the way in the places of the paths. She 
crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming i?i at the doors : 
Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man.'' 

Wisdom and understanding here, as elsewhere, both in 
the Old and the New Testament^ personify the idea of Re- 
ligion, which idea is full and perfect only in the person of 
our Saviour. In every age His presence in the world may 
be recognized, not only in different modes of revelation, 
but also in the general sense and meaning of the world. 
The voice of Wisdom has been heard crying in all ages, 
and the burden of her cry ever is, '' O ye simple, under- 
stand wisdom ; and ye fools, be ye of an understanding 
heart.'' 

We shall consider some of the different ways in which 
Wisdom speaks to men. 

In the first place God (or Wisdom) speaks to us through 
the natural world. There is a deep, inward, living con- 
nection between nature and religion. There is an Intel- 
ligence shining through the whole natural world, and a 
right state of mind on our part is all that is wanting to 
insure a proper apprehension of it. Our Saviour made 
frequent appeals to nature in His parables and in His 
teachings generally, not simply as a convenient commen- 
tary on the spiritual world, but as a mirror reflecting the 
images of spiritual things ; as something so constitution- 



184 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

ally one with the world of mind or spirit^ that to His 
all-seeing vision there was ever and always the expression 
of something far greater and grander than men ordinarily 
see in it. 

But not only does God, or Christ, or Wisdom, speak to 
us in nature. The same great Voice is heard also in his- 
tory, consisting of a moral world grounded in nature. 
History is possible only in the world of mind, or spirit ; 
a world that is akin to the divine Spirit ; and we must 
admit that God is present in this world of mind or spirit 
far more than He is present in the world of nature. His- 
tory reflects a sense of divine things, and gives the most 
unmistakable tokens of the presence and operations of 
God. No man can study the constitution of his own 
mind or ethical life, or the ethical life of a community^ 
without feeling himself confronted by a spirit more pow- 
erful than is to be found in the world of nature ; and when 
he enters upon the study of the still broader field of hu- 
manity, considered as a whole, what a wide meaning does 
he not find there. 

In the third place. Wisdom is heard to speak in the di- 
rect intuitional moral sense which every man carries in 
his own spirit. The address of Wisdom from this quar- 
ter is something quite different from that which we have 
already considered ; for in nature and in history the voice 
of Wisdom is heard from without, originating in an ob- 
jective form of existence; but when we turn our thoughts 
inward upon ourselves, not in the way of logical re- 
flection, but in the way of intuitional perception, then it 
is pre-eminently that that voice is heard, a voice from the 
heavenly world, a voice from God. Every man carries 
this in himself. He may make it a study in the case of 
others, when it will be found to possess great force ; but 



THE VOICE OF WISDOM. 185 

it is especially and emphatically in his own spirit that he 
hears the voice of God. '' There is a spirit in man, and 
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understand- 
ing." There is in every man a consciousness of God 
which is as original and as fundamental as is the conscious- 
ness of self; and this is the most direct and the most 
cogent argument for the existence of God that may any- 
where be found. If that fails, or is ignored, then indeed 
is the light in the man turned to darkness. But this 
consciousness of God not only involves an intuitional 
perception of His omnipresence but what is more, it also 
leads to a direct and immediate conviction of His spirit- 
uality and holiness. To this knowledge we do not come 
by any process of reflection, but directly in our own 
consciousness. And this is emphatically the voice of 
Wisdom, the voice of God in the soul, which can never 
be silenced. Even amongst the heathen that voice is 
heard. It makes itself felt and acknowledged where- 
ever there is a human spirit, and this voice, this sounding 
forth day and night in every soul, is no doubt what is 
meant by our text, '' Doth not Wisdom cry ? and under- 
standing put forth her voice ? " 

There is, however, a fourth form in which the voice of 
God challenges us even in a still more powerful way. 
The different methods in which we have so far considered 
Wisdom as speaking to man, would not be intelligible 
if her voice did not utter itself in yet another form, viz. 
in the form of a distinct and positive revelation ; such as 
was that voice which was heard amid the thunders of Mt* 
Sinai, in the declarations of the prophets, in the record 
of the Bible, and above all as that voice reaches its high- 
est possible expression in the person of the Son of God, 
concerning whom the voice of God Himself from heaven 



186 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

declared, " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased. Hear ye him/' 

Such is the process of revelation, starting away back 
in the first ages of the world, and perfecting itself in our 
Saviour. And for us especially, who live in the world 
since the incarnation, and who stand in the full meridian 
blaze of the Sun of Righteousness, is this voice full of 
authority, meaning and power. It is in this form that 
the voice of Wisdom nov/ cries to men. '' God who at 
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past 
unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by his Son.^' And this voice in revela- 
tion is heard not only when we read the Bible, or when 
we hear the word of God preached ; it has assumed an 
objective character also in the permanent constitution of 
the Christian community. Men that never pray^ nor 
read the Bible, nor even attend church, are still compelled 
to hear the voice of Wisdom crying to them in the life 
of every Christian man, woman or child they meet. That 
Voice speaks in every spire pointing heavenward, and in 
every grave telling of a world beyond. 

The following are some of the practical observations 
that may be made with profit on this subject : 

How utterly inexcusable men are in the broad light of 
Christianity, for neglecting or rejecting this voice ! Men 
often imagine that there is much apology for them be- 
cause this voice comes from an unseen world, which is 
so dark, mysterious, and far away ; and that because of 
this there is some excuse for a want of piety on their 
part, and for such a tenacious clinging to this world, and 
for shutting out from them all consideration of a world 
to come. But men are not cut off from the world to 
come. They are bound to it, as with hooks of steel, and 



THE VOICE OF WISDOM. 187 

are constantly confronted by it. And although that 
voice is not a loud voice for the outward sense, yet it is 
loud and clear for that sense which is within. In this re- 
spect, it is a voice of One '' standing in the top of the 
high places, by the way in the places of the paths." It 
is the Voice of One '' crying at the gates, at the entry 
of the city, at the coming in at the doors : Unto you, O 
men, I call ; and my voice is to the sons of man." So 
St. Paul says of the heathen, that they were " without 
excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified 
Him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain 
in their imaginations ; and their foolish heart was dark- 
ened." They thought they were following the highest 
wisdom ; they thought they had an excuse. So it is with 
sinners universally, and in every age (and especially in 
our own), when they are confronted by this great voice, 
*' If thine eye be single " — (Oh, what a world of meaning 
there is in this declaration of our Saviour's !) — '^ thy 
whole body shall be full of light ; but if thine eye be 
evil," (turbid, distorted, distempered), *' thy whole body 
shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is 
in thee " — (" the light that is in thee'^^ mark; not, as the in- 
fidel says, the light that is out of thee, on the outside of 
thee) — '' if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great 
is that darkrfess ! " 

Another reflection is this : if men are without excuse, 
then they will perish. Their punishment rests on them- 
selves. It might be imagined, and it sometimes is, that 
men may throw the blame on God. But in the great day 
of judgment, there will be no room for any extenuation 
of their crime in the presence of the Hosts of Holiness 
by whom they will then be surrounded. We have a plain 
declaration of their utter and awful rejection by the Lord 



188 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

at many places in the Scriptures; and very notable is that 
statement of it in the first chapter of this book of Prov- 
erbs, where Wisdom is represented as *' crying without '' 
— not in a secret place, in a closet; but openly and pub- 
licly, *' in the streets," *'in the chief place of concourse/' 
^' in the openings of the gates " — and saying, '' How long, 
ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ? And the scorn- 
ers delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge. 
Turn you at my reproof; behold I will pour out my spirit 
unto you." But now mark the tremendous and awful 
threat which follows this gracious invitation — ^' Because 
I have called and ye refused ; I have stretched out my 
hand, and no man regarded ; but ye have set at nought 
all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also 
will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear 
cometh." 

November 14, i86g. 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 189 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR I.ORD. 

%\t iSpistU ^L^ssoit for i\t JDaj. — 2 '^titx iii. 3-14. 

'* Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers^ walking 
after their own lusts ^ and sayings Where is the promise of his coming f 
for since tJie fathers fell asleep ^ all things continue as they were from, the 
beginning of the creation.^* 

This Scripture lesson has been very appropriately 
chosen for our meditation on the last Sunday in the 
Church Year. The Church Year closes with a considera- 
tion of *^the last things " — death, judgment, heaven, hell : 
whereby we are made to feel the vanity and frailty of all 
things earthly; which is an impression quite in harmony 
with the drear and desolate character of the closing part 
of the natural year; the sombre days of November being 
well adapted for Christian faith to realize the vanity of 
this world and the reality of a better and a higher world 
to come. 

Our lesson to-day has reference to the end of the world, 
but presents this, not as it is regarded by the naturalistic 
and humanitarian thinking of men, but as the accompani- 
ment or the consequence of the second coming of the 
Son of Man. It is not possible to exercise faith in His 
first coming without also going on to believe in His 
second coming. This is the sense of the Creed, where 
it is said, '' I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, 
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born 
of the Virgin Mary, . . . ascended into heaven . . . 
whence He shall come again to judge the quick and the 



190 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

dead.'^ The two ends of our Saviour s mediatorial work 
are so intimately joined together in one living, organic 
process, that His second coming of necessity occupies a 
very large place in the Gospels^ as well as in the Epistles 
of Paul, Peter and John generally. All this serves to 
show what a strong hold the fact of the second coming 
of our Lord had taken upon the faith of the Church in 
Apostolic times — a faith which stands in striking con- 
trast with the prevailing indifference or positive skepti- 
cism on the subject at the present day. 

The Epistle Lesson dwells upon the destruction of the 
present order of things, and points forward and upward 
to another and a higher order. In the thirteenth verse 
of the first chapter of this Epistle, the writer says, *^Yea, 
I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir 
you up by putting you in remembrance." St. Peter was 
now an old man, and did not expect in his day to see the 
coming of Christ, yet he wishes to remind those to whom 
he is writing of the promises and the certainty of the 
second advent of our Lord. In the sixteenth verse of 
the same chapter he says, '' For we have not followed 
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you 
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but 
were eye-witnesses of his majesty.'' The '' coming '' 
here spoken of was not the coming in the flesh, the In- 
carnation, nor the coming of the Holy Ghost on the day 
of Pentecost, but the actual coming of Jesus Christ a 
second time, in His own glorified person, with the holy 
angels of God ; this being the full and final completion 
of the Gospel, in the only form in which it could be com- 
pleted. St. Peter says he had been an eye-witness of our 
Saviour's majesty — but when, and where ? On the Mount 
of Transfiguration when, surrounded by majestic pres- 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 191 

ences from the invisible and eternal world, he was over- 
come by the unutterable glory of the Saviour, he and the 
other two disciples being overshadowed' by the cloud, 
from the bosom of which came a voice saying, '* This is 
my beloved Son : hear him." This had so fastened it- 
self upon the mind and memory of the disciple that he 
could never forget it. He had beheld the glorious 
epiphany of Christ with his own senses ; had seen it 
with his own eyes, and heard it with his own ears ; and 
in this epiphany the Lord did not pass out of and beyond 
this world into the heavenly world, but for a time passed 
into a higher, glorified state of human existence. The 
mediatorial life of Christ stands in close connection with 
our fading, failing, dying human life, and Is not to be re- 
garded as being separated from it, so as to become a 
mere abstraction for our thought. He is our Mediator 
not in any outward or mechanical way, but because He 
ever stands in living, organic relation to our humanity, 
which is nov/ glorified in His person. Even while still in 
the flesh, the three disciples were admitted to behold this 
glorious epiphany of a new and higher order of life to 
which human nature had been raised in Him. Only six 
days before this He had said, '' Verily I say unto you 
that there be some of them that stand here, which shall 
not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God 
come with power;" the reference being to this glorious 
manifestation of His majesty and power. 

It is upon this general ground that in the closing part 
of this chapter, St. Peter urges those to whom he is 
writing, not to give up the hope of His second coming. 
Concerning this concluding fact in the scheme of redemp- 
tion there was, even at that early day already, no small 
amount of infidelity. Men said, scoffing and mocking, 



192 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

^' Where is the promise of his coming? for since the 
fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of the creation." There is no sensible evi- 
dence or tangible proof of a new and higher order of 
things breaking in upon the world that now is ; things in 
the present order show no tendency whatever to bring 
such a result to pass. And so men in that day, as men 
in this day, rejected altogether the doctrine of a final 
consummation or catastrophe of the whole present mun- 
dane order. 

In our time, even more than in St. Peter's time, this 
same way of thinking and speaking prevails — even in the 
Church it is not seldom found. Men conceive of our 
common human life as carrying within it all that is neces- 
sary to bring about all that is promised in the Gospel, 
with the assistance of God's blessing. It is thought, and 
indeed openly claimed by many, that the world is making 
a more or less rapid approximation to the coming of the 
millennium in a purely natural way, by the operation of 
natural agencies, forces and powers; by the triumphs of 
mind over matter, by the discoveries of science, by the 
general diffusion of knowledge and the education of the 
whole world to a higher plane of intelligence. This is 
the complacent creed of the naturalist, of the political 
economist, and is the view held also by a large part of 
the tlieology of the present day, the supposition being 
that nature, assisted by divine grace, will somewhere in 
the future effloresce into the millennium. It is a very 
plausible doctrine, a very captivating belief Men are so 
easily and so powerfully impressed by the onward course 
of the merely natural world (including in that term not 
only outward material nature, but the moral and intel- 
lectual life of man, both individually and collectively)- — 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD, 193 

they are so captivated by the magnificent sweep of human 
progress from age to age, that they are very easily led to 
this false conclusion. 

The argument of St. Peter here is designed to draw 
men away from all such false humanitarian conceptions, 
and to assert a positive breaking in upon the present order 
of things from above and beyond. This is evidently the 
purpose of the Apostle in this entire chapter. Some per- 
sons in reading this chapter think that the Apostle is 
here referring to death. But death cannot be identified 
with the coming of Christ. Death is not something 
positive, but negative. It is no object of faith, and cannot 
be ; and faith must always have an object on which to 
rest. How then could the Apostle present that as the 
object of our faith which presents nothing solid and posi- 
tive for our faith to rest upon ? No. St. Peter here pre- 
sents to our faith a most sublimely real, objective fact in 
the scheme of redemption ; one that is of such over- 
powering significance as to sink all nature, and even 
death itself, into nothing when once compared with it — 
the glorious appearing of the Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of heaven, having all the holy angels of God with 
Him. 

Although the Apostle did not expect to see the com- 
ing of Christ in his day, he did not allow this to shake 
his faith. If only the reality of that coming be impressed 
on men, little matter about the exact time. The day of 
the Lord will come suddenly, as if it were to come this 
year, or this day, when men are not all looking for it or 
expecting it. *' Wherefore, beloved, seeing ye look for 
such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him 
in peace, without spot and blameless." 

November 2ist^ T86g, 

13 



194 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 



2rf)e Suntiag hefcre aiibent. 

THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 

%\t HSpij^lU Hl£j^j6on £or \\i Igaj.— 2 ^tiix (11. 3-14. 

(With especial reference to Verses 10-14.) 

*' But the day of the Lord will come asti thief in the night ; in the which the 
heavens shall pass away with a great noise^ and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat^ the earth also ahd the works that are therein shall be 
burned upp 

This passage of Scripture gathers up unto itself the 
general sense of the lessons for the day. Both the Gos- 
pel and the Epistle lesson for this day look to the second 
advent, in which the present dispensation of the grace 
of God shall reach its culmination, corresponding thus 
to the end of the Church Year. It is worthy of remark, 
we may observe, that we cannot take up a single epistle 
of St. Peter or St. John without finding in it a reference 
to this great and final conclusion of the work of redemp- 
tion. The parable of the ten virgins, being the Gospel 
lesson for this day, looks to this, not in a general, vague 
manner, but specifically as to the coming of the Son of 
Man. That is the sense also of the Epistle lesson for 
the day. The whole exhortation of the Apostle in this 
second chapter is to look for and to await the coming of 
Christ. The vision of Christ vouchsafed to the holy 
Apostle, St. Peter, on the Mount of Transfiguration, was 
evidently in his mind at the time of the writing of this 
epistle, as we see from the words (i. 16-18): '* For we 
have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made 
known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD, 195 

Christ, but were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he 
received from God the Father honor and glory when there 
came to him such a voice from the excellent glory, This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This vision 
of Christ in His glory was undoubtedly to the Apostle 
a representation and exhibition of the ultimate triumph 
of Christ in His coming to judge the world. 

The second advent forms an essential part of the 
Creed. It is not something accidental or adventitious^ 
but something essential to its substance. It would not 
be complete without it As soon as we see the relation 
of the Logos to the first creation, we are shut up to this 
conclusion of the second coming as the final redemption 
of the present order of things. The second coming of 
our Lord is a constituent element or factor of His re- 
deeming work. It is not mentioned simply here and 
there, and as it were by the way, in the Gospel narrative 
and in the epistles ; but it is so interwoven with the whole 
scheme of redemption as to make it evident at once that 
it is essential to the entire conception of it. All the 
promises and warnings of the New Testament are condi- 
tioned, more or less, by the idea of Christ's second 
coming. All Christians are addressed as ''waiting for 
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

So, also, this second coming of our Lord finds a neces- 
sary place in the Creed, which, without it, would indeed 
be incomplete, for this evidently is the end and consum- 
mation of the work of Christ. He shall come to judge. 
This judgment is not something, as many Christians 
often think, far off and vague. It is an object of faith, 
and cannot be disconnected from what precedes it in the 
order of redemption. If we admit and accept the first 
article of the Creed, we are bound to go on to the con- 



196 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

elusion, and accept this also as the necessary and logical 
consummation of the whole. 

Thus we are prepared measurably to see something of 
the nature of this great mystery. As a necessary out- 
growth of the first advent, we may consider what the 
second advent is not. 

It is not the coming of the Holy Ghost. '* I will not 
leave you orphans. I will come unto you.*' So said 
Christ to His sorrowing disciples on the eve of His 
departure from them. True, that was a coming of Christ ; 
but it was not the second advent. 

Then again, the second coming is very different from 
the death of the individual. Many persons confound 
the two. Death is the end of our life, through which 
we pass into another world : and some say that this is 
the coming of Christ. It is thought that death brings a 
man into a certain fixed and definite relation to Christ, 
and it is therefore imagined that our Lord had reference 
to this when He said, '' Watch, for ye know neither the 
day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.'^ 
For the real believer it is thought that this is a coming 
of Christ to deliver him finally and forever from all evil. 
That is a plausible view of the matter, but it is neverthe- 
less a most serious error. It obscures the sense and 
saving force of this article of the second coming. 
Death is not a victory, but a curse from which the human 
spirit instinctively shrinks away, although the Christian 
faith may and does overcome that feeling. Nevertheless, 
death is a curse, the result of sin. It is the laying of 
the hand of God on the sinner in judgment. It is easy 
to see the difference between the two. Death is not only 
a curse, whereas the second coming is a blessing, but 
death is something negative, nothing positive, the mere 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 197 

end of our life, a mere negation. Are we, for even a 
moment, to confound the second coming of our Lord 
with a mere negation ? No ; the second coming of 
Christ is something positive ; a positive fullness^ such as 
was His first advent, and includes in itself the whole 
force and power of the resurrection and the whole 
redeeming work of His life. Furthermore, death cannot 
be an article of faith, but the second coming is. An 
article of faith is a real, positive, supernatural fact of ex- 
istence, growing out of the incarnation. Now, death 
does not come as a result of the incarnation. Death comes 
from sin, from the first Adam, not from the second. 
There is nothing supernatural about it, and so we don*t 
need any faith in it. We don't need any faith in death 
any more than we do in birth. It is a nattiral fact which 
the slightest experience in life shows us. It is a dark 
mystery, of course, but nevertheless it is included within 
the scope of the purely natural. The second coming 
of our Lord, on the contrary, is a mystery in which the 
supernatural is made to touch the natural. The eye 
cannot see it ; it cannot be made sure to the senses ; it 
must be self-authenticated to faith in distinction from 
the natural senses ; and so, as is the case with all Chris- 
tian mysteries, it must strike the natural mind as an 
absurdity. The whole redeeming work of Christ and all 
its sublime facts, though eminently rational, yet to the 
natural man are foolishness. '^ There shall come in the 
last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and say- 
ing, Where is the promise of his coming ?" What has 
become of it ? '' All things," in the world of nature, 
^' continue as they were from the beginning of the crea- 
tion." That is forever, in every age, the language of 
naturalism, the argument of rationalism. 



198 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

The argument of the Apostle St. Peter shows that the 
second advent does transcend the merely natural sense, 
and so is an object for faith, holding in the mystery of 
the supernatural world. And his argument is that since 
the first creation is not demonstrable to the senses, why 
should the second coming of Christ be, creating the 
new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness ? 

In these ways we can easily see how different the 
second coming is from death. We can never do justice 
at all to the thought of Christ's second glorious advent 
by making it identical with our death. It is a profound 
mystery, reaching down into the depths of the world's 
life. 

We may now see the use of this article of the Creed. 
It is of practical consequence, as being an object for our 
faith. Our apprehension of it must be a faith — not a 
barren speculation about it, or a notion concerning it — 
but a positive, real faith in it. It was undoubtedly with 
reference to the difficulty of realizing it in this way that 
our Saviour was moved to exclaim, '' When the Son of 
man cometh, shall he find faith on earth ?" that is, shall 
He find this kind of faith, of which we are speaking, 
waiting for Him ? This is the keystone in the arch of 
the Christian faith. As there is no complete redemptive 
work without the second coming, so there can be no 
perfect faith that does not lay hold on the second 
coming. What a great thing it is to feel that we are 
thus confronted and challenged by the high economy of 
grace in its entire constitution, and to have faith in it ! 
It is, indeed, a great and grand thing to lay hold of these 
facts by a power utterly transcending thought, so that 
we may exclaim with Thomas, ^' My Lord, and my God !'* 



THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. 199 

That is always true of every fact in our Lord's redeem- 
ing work, but it seems especially hard to lay hold of this 
article of the second coming in this way. 

We need, however, strongly to lay hold on and to 
meditate upon this sublime and glorious advent, so that 
we may stand strong against all gnostic and humanitarian 
views. 

There is a tendency to regard our life as rising upward 
in a humanitarian way, by virtue of its own power, into 
a higher life. This is the tendency of all natural sci- 
ence, which seeks to enable man to master all the secrets 
of nature, and which, beginning in the depths, would 
scale the heavens. We must beware of that ! We feel 
instinctively that our birth is from the skies, and that 
thitherward are we bound. It is only when we feel the 
nothingness of our life that we become sensible of our 
need of redemption. Yet, this redemption com.ing 
through Christ cannot be apprehended by the under- 
standing, but must authenticate itself to faith, and brings 
with it an evidence higher and stronger than any evi- 
dence of science. That sublime thought runs all through 
this Epistle of St. Peter. He has not '^followed cun- 
ningly-devised fables ;" he has also ^' a more sure word 
of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as 
unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day 
dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.'' 

Then, furthermore, we have in this Epistle Lesson for 
the day a setting forth of the design of this article of the 
second coming for the practical purposes of our Chris- 
tian life. The second coming does not address the fears 
of believers. Itjs the winding up of this our present 
miserable life, and so should not be contemplated with 
feelings of fear. When that great truth once truly 



200 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

enters into the mind, and takes full possession of the 
soul, we rise to the power of making nothing of this 
world, whether as natural, moral or political. Most 
men, indeed, sooner or later^ come to admit that, in a 
general, poetical and sentimental way, but they do not 
truly feel it. When once we have anything like a proper 
apprehension of the sublime fact of the second coming 
of the Son of Man, the world for us becomes shorn of 
its power — we are enabled to despise it, to cast it from 
us, and so to '' run with diligence the race that is set 
before us." This was undoubtedly the feeling of the first 
early Christians, who thought the world about to come 
to an end. Therefore were they willing *' to suffer the 
loss of all things" to be made *' a spectacle unto the 
world, unto angels and unto men/' and to crown all their 
other sufferings with martyrdom. The Epistles, taken 
as a whole, go upon that feeling — " The Lord is at hand, 
be careful for nothing." And all Christians, in every 
age, ought to share that feeling, whether in prosperity or 
adversity. '' Our life is hid with Christ in God, and when 
Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also 
appear '' in the glory of a new and higher life. Thus 
our life is now hid, as it were, for a short time, ^' and when 
he shall appear," it shall come forth in the full glory of 
a new life, '* in the new heavens and earth wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness." 

November 26^ 18 ji. 



NATURE AND GRACE, 201 



NATURE AND GRACE. 

3of)lt iii. 13. 

" No man hath ascended up to heaven^ but he that came down from heaven^ 
even the Sen of man which is in heaven'' 

To reach the full sense of this remarkable declaration 
on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ, we need to have 
clearly before us the occasion on which it was uttered. 

There was a man of the Pharisees, we are told, by 
name Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, 
and a leading master or teacher in Israel. The same 
came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him : " Rabbi, we 
know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for no 
man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be 
with him." 

The object of the address was to draw the Saviour into 
an exposition of His views and aims, in the prophetical 
character in which He appeared ; and it was prompted 
by the serious thought, no doubt, that the new prophet 
might be indeed the Messiah promised to the fathers, and 
that the time had come possibly for the solemn inaugu- 
ration of His kingdom. In this feeling Nicodemus was 
not alone, at that time, among the rulers of his nation. 
He spake for others as well as for himself : *' We know, 
that thou art a teacher come from God ! '' The miracles 
performed by Jesus were the seal of His divine mission ; 

* A Baccalaureate Sermon preached to the late Graduating Class of Frank- 
lin and Marshall College, on the evening of the last Sunday in June, 1872, 
in the First Reformed Church of Lancaster, Pa. 



202 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

and those who sat in Moses' seat, the guardians of the 
ancient Jewish faith — some of them at least — were in- 
cHned to come to an understanding with Him in regard 
to the kingdom of God He had in His mind, and if it 
were found satisfactory to join also the weight of their 
character and influence with Him in bringing it to pass. 

All this, however, rested as we can easily see on a 
radically defective apprehension, both of the person of 
Christ and of the work for which He had come into the 
world. The stand-point of Nicodemus, over against the 
revelation of God in Christ, was that of rationalistic 
supernaturalism. Christ was for him at most a teacher 
sent from God, a prophet like unto Moses, holding in 
His hand an outward commission from heaven, duly 
certified by His miracles as outward seals. He was a 
man clothed with divine powers for the accomplishment 
of a divine work ; but the divinity which was perceived 
to be in Him and with Him, came to no real union with 
His humanity. This was the defect of the Jewish idea 
of the Messiah in general ; a defect for which there was 
no effectual help indeed, until Christ Himself appeared 
as the full object of the Christian faith. Before that the 
Messianic conception was necessarily dualistic, and the 
dualism had no power to save itself from ultimate hu- 
manitarianism as expressed in the creed of Nicodemus, 
'* Thou art a man come from God." It is in substance 
the Ebionitic heresy, which figures so largely afterwards 
in the early history of the Christian Church. In the 
view of such thinking, Christianity could be only a con- 
tinuation of Judaism* out of its own last result and end, 
and nothing more. The days of the Messiah were to be 
in some way the efflorescence simply of the Old Testa- 
ment theocracy, in the midst of outward signs and won- 



NATURE AND GRACE, 203 

ciers, into the highest perfection of its own order of life. 
So Nicodemus, with others of like mind with himself, 
looked for the advent of the kingdom of God, and mused 
in his spirit at this time on the possibility that Jesus of 
Nazareth might be that prophet raised up of God to bring 
about the restoration of Israel by its means. 

To this general wrong posture of mind on the part of 
the venerable Jewish rabbi, rather than to his somewhat 
diplomatic speech directly, our Saviour addressed His 
profoundly soul-awakening reply: ^'Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee. Except a man be born again, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." 

It is unfortunate, certainly, that the Greek term dvcod^ev 
in this passage, should be rendered in our version by the 
adverb again, when it signifies in truth^ properly 
and immediately, from above. Any birth indeed that is 
new, however it may be brought to pass, is of course a 
regeneration, or being born again, and may be properly 
so named. But plainly it is not j ust the thought of being 
born again, in the ordinary religious sense of the term 
regeneration (familiar as this was to the Jewish mind in 
connection with the Jewish proselyte baptism), that our 
Saviour here means to press on the attention of Nico- 
demus ; it is rather, instead of this, the thought that lies 
immediately in the primary sense of the word avco&ev 
itself, as denoting a birth ''from above," from beyond the 
natural order of the world's life; and His declaration 
should read accordingly: '' Except a man be born from 
above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." This king- 
dom was not to be considered a mere last product of the 
constitution of Judaism in any form; it was the revela- 
tion of a new, higher order of life in the world, descend- 
ing directly from God Himself; and the first condition 



204 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

therefore even of seeing it, or of understanding in any 
way its true nature, could be nothing less than a princi- 
ple of new heavenly life proceeding also from God, or in 
other words a new birth derived from the womb of the 
kingdom itself which was to be thus known and entered. 

That this was our Saviour's meaning is rendered plain 
from what He adds immediately after : '' Verily, verily, 
I say unto thee. Except a man be born of water and of 
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'' 
Here being ^' born from above" is made equivalent to 
being ^^born of the Spirit; " while the conjunction of the 
water with the Spirit serves of itself to sunder the sense 
of all previous Jewish purifications and lustrations (ending 
in the baptism of John), from the higher consecration 
thus brought into view. The terrestrial symbol was to 
become full and complete now through actual union 
with its true celestial sense; according to that word 
spoken to the Baptist : '' Upon whom thou shalt see the 
Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is 
he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." The birth 
from above is more than the washing of a simply moral 
or theocratic regeneration even in its highest form ; it 
goes beyond all this ; it is a birth not of water only, but 
'* of water and of the Spirit." It is the introduction of a 
new divine principle into the being of the soul. It is 
not in any way of nature, or from the powers of man's 
life existing before itself. As related to all this it is 
transcendental and supernatural. It is in such view the 
opposite of all earthly natural birth, a birth literally 
and strictly /r^;^ above. 

The contrast could not be put in stronger terms than 
it is by what our Lord adds in explanation of it : *' That 
which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is 



NATURE AND GRACE. 205 

born of the Spirit is spirit/' The life of nature can have 
no power to transcend or rise beyond itself Its birth is 
the measure of its capabilities whether physical or moral. 
If man is to attain then to a true divine life, it must be 
by the coming down of this life into him as something 
more than flesh. He must be born of the Spirit. 
Only what is from the Spirit in this way can be itself 
spirit, capable of having place and part in the king- 
dom of God. 

The necessity of a communion between earth and 
heaven, between man and God, that should be some- 
thing more than a moral or spiritual rising simply of 
the human to the divine in the order of the human 
itself; the necessity of a real coming down of the di- 
vine into the sphere of the liuman, to make room for 
such supernatural communion, as the only true idea of 
the kingdom of God ; that is the great thought which 
governs and underlies throughout the discourse of our 
Saviour with Nicodemus, and which leads also in the 
end to the true view of what Christ Himself was as the 
solution of this problem and the founder of this king- 
dom. He was no mere teacher come from God, the re- 
porter of divine oracles attested in an outside way by di- 
vine miracles. He was nothing less than the very pres- 
ence of God Himself among men in human form. '^ We 
speak that we do know," He says, *' and testify that we 
have seen.*' He was empowered to tell of heavenly 
things, not of knowing them in an earthly way by out- 
ward testimony or argument, but as one who was Him- 
self an inmate of heaven, and an eye-witness of the things 
that are there. This was the capacity in which He ap- 
peared among men. That was the nature of His mission 
and work in the world. That was the key to the true 



206 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

and full sense of the Messianic kingdom which He had 
come to establish, and of which Nicodemus was now 
present to inquire. So much, and no less, the idea of 
that kingdom demanded, if it was to be what the need of 
the world required, a real restoration of man to the lost 
life of heaven. No such restoration could start from 
below, from the fallen life of man himself; it must de- 
scend upon man from God. '' No man," as our text has 
it, *' hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down 
from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." 

There is brought into view here what may be termed a 
fundamental and universal law of our human spiritual life. 
This is determined in its very nature toward God by a force 
which can become effectual for its end at the same time 
only through power descending into it from God. *'Thou 
awakest us to delight in Thy praise/' says St. Augus- 
tine ; '' for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is 
restless, until it rest in Thee." 

In a still wider view, indeed, the whole world is in this 
way carried toward God, as its ultimate end ; and its up- 
ward movement everywhere is upheld and sustained, in 
each stage of its rising course, by the energy of a higher 
existence flowing down into it from above. In other 
words, final causes everywhere are the actuating soul of 
efficient causes. 

Thus it is that the unorganized elements of nature, air, 
water, light, heat, force, have their full meaning only in 
the metamorphosis or transmutation they are made to 
undergo through the law of life^ and first of all the plastic 
principle of plant life, bringing them into a new and 
higher mode of existence. And just so it is again that 
this first and lowest order of organization, the plant world, 
reaches forth of itself toward that which is above it, the 



NATURE AND GRACE. 207 

sphere of animal life ; into which it has power actually to 
pass, however, only as it is itself caught up again, by a 
force descending into it from that superior sphere itself; 
a force which imparts a new quality, by assimilation, to 
all the elements that come under its action, and which 
serves to advance them thus one degree nearer than be- 
fore to the last grand object of their creation. 

But it is the transition of nature from the animal to 
man, in whom nature transcends itself by rising into the 
life of mind or spirit, that the law in question comes 
finally to its clearest manifestation. Here is a metamor- 
phosis or glorification, a sublimation of the world, which 
surpasses immeasurably all going before, while it throws 
a sea of light, at the same time, back on the whole move- 
ment of creation, revealing what had been in truth the 
inmost working sense of it from the beginning. But that 
sense or end (the teleology of the entire cosmos) is now 
most of all seen to be a power, working down into na- 
ture, and lifting it up into its own higher sphere. *^ There 
is a spirit in man," we are told, '' and the inspiration or 
inbreathing of the Alm.ighty giveth him understanding." 
It is as joined with this higher principle in man, as trans- 
muted in this way into the spirituality of thought, and 
made to mirror itself in the human intelligence, that the 
world in its natural order is, as it were, carried above and 
beyond itself, and is thus raised to its highest glory in 
the scheme of creation. 

And all this, we now say, is but an analogy and adum- 
bration in the world of nature of the great spiritual law, 
presented to us by our present subject ; the law, whereby 
the rational nature of man again, in which the lower 
world becomes .complete, is inwardly necessitated to 
seek its perfection and supreme good also beyond it- 



208 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

self and in God ; while it is able to do so effectually, 
at the same time, only as the light and life of heaven 
are made first to flow down into it for that purpose. 

It is not simply the existence of sin^ as sometimes 
seems to be imagined, that requires this order. Apart 
from the fact of the fall altogether, and before the fall, 
we meet with it in the Garden of Eden. The image 
of God which belonged to our unfallen nature there; 
formed of itself for this nature the necessity of its 
communion with God ; while that communion, however, 
had place only by the coming down of the Divine pres- 
ence to make it possible. God revealed Himself to our 
first parents in Paradise, and they heard His voice, we 
are told, as of one walking and conversing with them in 
the most immediately personal way. 

But if the union of man with God needed even before 
the fall this bowing of the heavens, this coming down of 
the divine into the sphere of the earthly and human, to 
make it a reality and not a mere aspiration or dream, 
how much more must the same condition be regarded as 
holding necessarily of what the state of man became 
after the fall, through which the light that was in him 
has been turned into darkness, and the strength of his 
original righteousness, is changed into the melancholy 
weakness of original sin ! 

How incompetent he is in such fallen condition to 
solve the great problem of religion, and thus satisfy the 
inmost and deepest need of his own being, by rising 
above himself and entering into true life-communion with 
the heavenly and divine, is shown abundantly by the 
history of his efforts and endeavors in this direction from 
the beginning. 

The old mythological story of the earth-born giants 



NATURE AND GRACE. 209 

striving to scale the heavens in an outward physical way, 
by piling high mountains one upon another, is but an 
image or parable of these struggles, by which humanity 
thrown upon its own resources has vainly sought in the 
use of its best powers, through all ages, to rise with in- 
ward moral elevation to the true knowledge and posses- 
sion of the Divine. 

Neither in the way of intelligence nor in the way of 
will, neither in thought nor in life, was the ancient 
Paganism able in any sort to actualize what was felt to 
be here the inmost sense of religion, and the chief end of 
man. Its heroes rose to the dignity of demi-gods by 
their imaginary virtue ; its philosophers soared high 
above the earth by their imaginary wisdom. But in 
neither case was there any true ascending into heaven, 
any true bringing down of God and heavenly things into 
felt union and communion with the life of man on the 
earth. That was something which no moral Hercules, 
and no speculative Pythagoras or Plato, had power, even 
in the least degree, to compass or bring to pass. Virtue 
in such form, and wisdom in such form, were after all 
humanitarian only; flesh, born of the flesh, and not 
spirit, born of the Spirit ; which as such accordingly 
could neither see nor enter into the kingdom of God. 

The history of the Pagan world before Christ was in 
this way a preparation for His advent. It was a grand 
demonstration of the total inability of the world to fulfil 
the idea of religion by raising itself to a true knowledge 
of God ; and an argument thus for the necessity of a de- 
scending movement on the part of God Himself, a Divine 
self-revelation on the side of God in the fullest sense of 
the term, to make .such religion possible. It was an ex- 
periment indeed, according to St. Paul, for this very pur- 
14 



210 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, ' 

pose. '' After that in the wisdom of God," he tells us, 
I Cor. i. 21, ^'the world by wisdom knew not God, it 
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them 
that believe." Christianity came as the easy and simple 
answer for faith to the question of ages, which for the 
wisdom of the old Oriental world, the wisdom of Egypt, 
and the later wisdom of Greece, had been thought long 
centuries before, a source only of interminable confusion 
and despair. 

But granting all this in the case of the Gentile world 
before Christ, how does it affect, it may be asked, the 
case of the Jezvish world before Christ ? Was not the 
want of the Gentile world actually met there in the 
form of divine revelation, ages in advance of His ad- 
vent in the flesh; and was not this a real solution of 
the great problem of humanity, the uniting of man 
with God in the way of religion, back altogether of 
what our Saviour here, in His conversation with Nic- 
odemus, declares to be the only true solution of it, 
namely: His own personal descent as the Son of Man 
from heaven ? 

To this there can be but one answer, if Christ Him- 
self is true. All revelation before Christ was relative 
and partial only, having its ultimate reality in Him 
alone ; and so all religion in the Jewish form was also 
only relative and partial, a prolepsis simply as far as it 
went of the full new birth of Christianity, the ^' shadow 
and not the very image" of what it prefigured, that as 
such could reach its own full completion only beyond 
this life, and after Christ actually came (Heb. xi. 13, 39, 
40). Christ was in the world, as the eternal Logos, 
before He became incarnate, and so also was the Holy 
Ghost ; but neither one nor the other in the sam.e sense 



NATURE AND GRACE, 211 

or with like power, as afterwards. The difference was 
that between Christ coming (or about to come) and 
Christ actually come ; that between the promise of the 
Holy Ghost, as the power of the new creation in Christ 
Jesus, and the actual gift or sending of the Holy Ghost, 
which took place when Christ was glorified, and which 
could not, we are told, take place before (John vii. 39). 

Judaism thus, as we know, was also but a preparation 
for Christ ; not a mere negative preparation indeed like 
Gentilism ; on the contrary a Divinely ordered positive 
preparation, the very portico of entrance itself, we may 
say, into the the glorious sanctuary of His presence ; 
but still a preparation only for the Christian fact, and 
not the full power of the fact itself in its own proper 
form. What the Baptist says of himself, holds good of 
the whole dispensation ending in his person. It was the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness, "' Prepare ye the 
way of the Lord and make His paths straight." It was 
not the kingdom of God or of heaven, of which our 
Saviour speaks in His discourse with Nicodemus. 

In a profound sense, therefore, the declaration, " No 
man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down 
from heaven," applies in all its force to the Old Testa- 
ment prophets no less than to the heroes, lawgivers and 
sages of the ancient heathen world. Moses, Elias, and 
Isaiah had been as little able in their time to ascend up 
to heaven, in the sense of this declaration, as either 
Zoroaster or Confucius, Pythagoras or Plato. Not even 
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by which they were 
moved, carried them to any such height as this. They 
spake as they were thus moved, but the oracles they ut- 
tered had not their origin in themselves, and were not 
drawn directly and immediately from their own knowl- 



212 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

edge. They could not say of the things of heaven, as 
Christ does, *'We speak that we do know, and testify 
that we have seen." They performed miracles and uttered 
prophecies ; but no one of them could have dared to say 
with Jesus Christ: ^' I am in the Father, and the Father 
is in me: the words that I speak unto you, I speak not 
of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth 
the works." 

No one of them could have dared to say, with 
Him : " I came forth from the Father, and am come into 
the world; again I leave the world, and go to the 
Father." Or that other word of like sounding import : 
'^AU things are delivered unto me of my Father ; and 
no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father ; and 
who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son 
will reveal him." Speech of this sort, we all feel, would 
have been horrid blasphemy from any lips other than 
those of Jesus Christ; whereas proceeding from Him it 
is felt as only in harmony with His universal character 
and presence, and produces no shock. He stands alone 
among the Old Testament prophets ; the end of their 
glorious succession, and yet immeasurably more than 
all of them put together, as we are expressly told by the 
last and greatest among them, John the Baptist. '^ Of 
his fulness," he says, *^have all we received, and grace 
for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace 
and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen 
God at any time : the only begotten Son, which is in 
the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." 

We have the same broad contrast of relative and ab- 
solute revelation brought into view again in the begin- 
ning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is said : 
'* God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake 



NATURE AND GRACE. 213 

'in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in 
these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath 
appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the 
worlds ; who being the brightness of his glory, and the 
express image of his person, and upholding all things by 
the word of his power, when he had by himself purged 
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on 
high." — Heb. i. i, 2, 3. 

This transcendent order of the Saviour's ministry is 
plainly set forth in what took place at His baptism ; 
when, as He came up out of the water, the heavens were 
opened unto Him, we are told, the Spirit of God de- 
scended upon Him in bodily form, and from above was 
heard the voice of the Father Himself, saying : ''This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased/* This it was 
indeed that proclaimed to John the Baptist the full sense 
of His Messiahship over against all the inspirations 
and theophanies of the Old Testament, and enabled 
that great witness to say : '' I saw, and bare record 
that this is the Son of God." Heaven and earth were 
joined together in His person. He was the true tab- 
ernacle of God among men. 

Of like import with this demonstration on the banks 
of the Jordan was the vision afterwards of Tabor; that 
high mountain apart into which Jesus brought Peter, 
James, and John his brother ; and where He was trans- 
figured before them, so that His face did shine as the 
sun, and his raiment was white as the light. In the 
midst of this splendor, there appeared unto them, it is 
said, two men, also in shining apparel, which were 
Moses and Elias; who talked with Him, and spake of 
His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusa- 
lem. And, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, 



214 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

the symbol of Jehovah's presence, and behold a voice 
out of the cloud, which said: **This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." 
Here, the secondary and dependent character of the 
universal Old Testament revelation, as related to Christ* 
is brought into view in the most solemn and impres- 
sive manner. Its great representatives, Moses and 
Elias, the founder and the restorer of the Law, had 
ages before ascended to heaven — the last even in an 
outward chariot of fire, and without the usual form of 
death. Yet here they appear as owing all their glory 
to Him who had come after them, and their presence 
is but the occasion for showing forth the absolutely in- 
comparable majesty which belonged to Him, as the 
Son of Man, who was at the same time the only be- 
gotten Son of God. 

These two titles, meeting in the conception of the 
Messiah, condition each other and come in the end to 
the same sense. 

The law of centralization runs through the whole hu- 
man life, and finds its end at last only in the idea of a 
grand central Man, who as such must be at once one and 
universal, the second Adam, the head and representative 
of the race in its true ideal perfection. That, and noth- 
ing less, is the meaning of the Messianic title Son of 
Man. 

But such an ultimate centre of humanity, having power 
to recapitulate and hold together its universal life as one, 
must be at the same time more than human, must be the 
power of a higher divine life revealing itself in and 
through the human, for the purpose of raising it into real 
union and fellowship with God. This is what St. Paul 
has in his mind where he speaks (Eph. i. lo) of the 



NATURE AND GRACE, ' 215 

gathering together in one of all things in Christ, both 
which are in heaven and which are on earth. No simple 
ascension of the human out of its own sphere, not even 
the translation of an Enoch or the fiery sublimation of 
an Elias, could open the way for any such intercourse 
and communion between earth and heaven. The power 
making this possible must first of all start from above. 
The life of God must reach down into the life of man, so 
as to lift this up into his own higher sphere. So much, 
and nothing less, is what is signified to us by the Mes- 
sianic title Son of God. 

Only the Son of God thus could be the Son of Man ; 
and Jesus is the Messiah, because He was in the days of 
His flesh, and still is, and will always continue to be, the 
union of these two distinctions, "conceived by the Holy 
Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary," both God and man 
in two distinct natures and one person forever. 

The central exclusiveness, and absolute completeness, 
of the mediation of Jesus Christ, are expressed alike in 
both titles ; and faith in the one is necessarily at the same 
time faith also in the other. 

" Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the king 
of Israel," exclaimed Nathanael, struck with the first evi- 
dence he had of the superior nature of Jesus of Naza- 
reth. Jesus, in reply, intones the correlative significance 
of what He" was on His earthly human side. "Thou 
shalt see greater things than these," He tells him. " Verily, 
verily, I say unto you. Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, 
and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
So7i of Man!' Heaven in free communication with earth ; 
angels ascending and descending between the two other- 
wise sundered worlds ; but all centering in the glorious 
mystery of the Incarnation, where the Son of God and 



216 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

the Son of Man meet together as one. The descending 
movement in this way first ; only so, however, as to be- 
come at once an ascending movement also, raising the 
life of humanity into real union with the life of God. 

" Whom do men say that I the Son of man am ? '' To 
this question of our Lord, we are told (Matthew xvi. 14), 
the common answer ran, " John the Baptist, Elias, Jere- 
mias, or one of the prophets ; " humanitarian conceptions 
all, at best, of the Messiahship required for the full ideal 
completion of the human race. But for Peter and his 
fellow-apostles, the Son of Man was infinitely more than 
this. '' Thou art the Christ," they say, ^* the Son of the 
living God ; " and the answer, as we know, was the 
heaven-inspired response of faith to the challenge of the 
divinity itself, which shone forth immediately from His 
person. They saw and felt in Him, a man who was greater 
than all men besides. A man, who stood solitary and 
alone among the children of men, and yet comprehended 
in Himself the inmost and deepest sense of humanity. A 
man, in one word, the absolute completeness of whose 
humanity showed Him to be more than man, revealed 
in Him and through Him the glory of the higher world, 
and thus proved him to be the world's true Christ or 
Messiah, the Son of Man who was at the same time, as 
such, the only begotten Son of God. 

Such in a general view is the order of the Christian 
salvation, the economy of the kingdom of God, on which 
our Saviour seeks to fasten the wondering attention of 
Nicodemus, in the passage we have before us as a text 
at this time : '' No man hath ascended up to heaven, but 
he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man 
which is in heaven." 

In full symphony with this, we seem to hear St. Paul's 



NATURE AND GRACE, 217 

triumphal paean (Eph. iv. 9, 10) chanted so grandly to 
the Ephesians : " Now that he ascended, what is it but 
that he also descended first into the lower parts of the 
earth ? He that descended is the same also that as- 
cended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all 
things." 

Redemption for man, deliverance from the power of 
sin and death ; not in the mode of any outward, superfi- 
cial change merely wrought from below, through the 
natural resources of humanity itself, or by the illapse 
even of heavenly influences coming in to adjust these 
resources in their own order; but only in the mode of a 
new divine life, proceeding forth from God in personal 
form, and taking hold of the fallen life of the world in a 
real historical way, so as to rescue it from the captivity 
of Satan and raise it to the light of immortality and 
heaven : this is what Christianity means, and it is not 
possible that it can be rightly understood or made of 
proper practical account in any other view. 

From the whole subject allow me now in conclusion, 
my dear pupils, members of the Graduating Class of 
1872, to draw in brief terms a few general lessons of 
high practical moment, which I ask you to take with you 
from the solemnity of the present hour as my paternal 
farewell charge, for the use of your lives in time to come. 
The lessons you will at once perceive, are not new; they 
have formed in one way or another the burden of what 
you have been taught in the way of religion through 
your whole college course. But they are lessons at the 
same time which can never grow old, and which it is es- 
pecially proper therefore to emphasize and enforce upon 
your attention on this occasion. 

I. Christianity is not primarily a doctrine for the 



218 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

understanding, nor a rule of conduct for the will, but a 
principle of life for the soul deeper than either under- 
standing or will, and carrying in it the power of a divine 
regeneration for all that the soul is, or is capable of be- 
coming, in any other view. 

2. As life in this sense, accordingly, religion is infin- 
itely more than the conception of any supposed natural 
morality and virtue, which under the name of life is 
made too often to stand in the room of all religious 
theory and faith; as when it is said : 

'' For points of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 

Practice in that view is just as little true life, in the deep 
Christian sense of the term, as knowledge or doctrine. 
Life in the Christian sense of the term involves faith ; for 
it is a birth from above, which as such cannot be without 
some apprehension of its own supernal origin and 
source. 

3. So much is comprehended at once in the idea of 
this supernal birth itself, as it is presented to us in the 
Gospel. For it is no re-ordering merely of the natural 
powers of the soul; nor yet any general influence simply 
of the Divine Spirit upon the human spirit, that the new 
birth here signifies, as we have now seen from our Sav- 
iour's discourse with Nicodemus. On the contrary, what 
it signifies is incorporation by the power of the Holy 
Ghost, figured in holy baptism, into the new life which 
had been brought into the world by the Incarnation of 
our Lord Jesus Christ; '^who, being God of God, very 
God of very God, dwelling in the bosom of the Father 
from all eternity, at last when the fulness of the time was 
come, came down from heaven, and became man, for us 



NATURE AND GRACE. 219 

men and for our salvation ; " who *'was delivered for our 
offences, and was raised again for our justification ; " 
who, "by his appearing hath abohshed death and 
brought Hfe and immortaHty to light through the Gos- 
pel ; '^ and who, by the sending of the Holy Ghost, and 
the institution of the Church, has made room for the 
real, historical and objective presence of this new order 
of life among His people to the end of time. 

4. We cannot then make too much of the Person of 
Christy regarded as the principle and ground of the 
Christian salvation. He is not the mere functionary 
simply through whom this salvation is administered and 
made known ; He is the very substance and power of 
the salvation itself; it holds throughout in the constitu- 
tion of His mediatorial life, which by its very nature has 
been, and is still, in the most real historical way, the en- 
tire mystery of godliness, ordained before all ages for the 
redemption and glorification of the world. To the ques- 
tion : '' What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?" 
it is not enough for us to respond : " He is the son of 
David." He must be for us in full earnest at the sam^ 
time also the Son of the Living God. In other words, 
He must be to us in His own personal being more than 
all His heavenly teaching and divine working. These 
are great, and greatly to be magnified, as the objective 
matter of Christian faith ; but deeper than all this, and 
before all this, He is Himself the ultimate fundamental 
object of thaf faith, and it is only as the entire matter of 
it is apprehended as growing forth from that in this cen- 
tral view, that any part or portion of it can ever be rightly 
apprehended under any other view. 

5. We are bound thus to allow full scope to the Mes- 
sianic title Son of God^ in our conception of Christ and 



220 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

His work. We may not narrow it into the notion of a 
mere official dignity ; we may not resolve it into the 
character of a pale Gnostic abstraction. It must be al- 
lowed to condition for us practically the height and depth, 
the length and breadth of the Christian redemption. 
This redemption can be no accident or after-thought in 
the economy of creation. It is no figure of speech sim- 
ply, to parallelize the new creation, as St. Paul does, with 
the old. It is only our miserably low way of thinking 
of Christ, that can ever tempt us to any such thought. 
The principle of the two creations is the same, and the 
end therefore, here as elsewhere, must have in it not 
only all, but more than all, the cosmical significance of 
the beginning. Only the " first-born of every creature '' 
(Col. i. 15, 18) could become also the *' first-born from 
the dead ; '' the Father being pleased thus •' that in him 
all fulness should dwell." The predestination of grace 
in this way antedates the predestination of nature, having 
had place in Christ, we are told (Eph. i. 4), '' before the 
foundation of the world. '^ Grace in such view is older than 
nature, deeper than nature, more comprehensive than 
nature. Christ is the Alpha and Omega of both, and of 
both joined together as one. He descended, as the Re- 
deemer of the world, into tiie lowest parts of the earth, 
that He might ascend up to His work far above all 
heavens, and so fill all things. The powers of the king- 
dom of heaven in His hand take hold on the deep places 
of the earth, the lowest foundations of the world's being 
and life. They are cosmogonic, world-historical, and 
world-teleologic in the profoundest and inmost sense of 
these terms, ending at last in the '' new heavens and the 
new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

6. All this, we say, belongs to Christ as the Son of 



NATURE AND GRACE. 221 

God ; but in all this we are bound again to see and own 
in Him at the same time, in its full unbroken force, the 
Messianic dignity of the Son of Man, Only as thus 
gathering up into Himself the absolute and last sense of 
humanity, could He be at once the deepest and highest 
sense of the world, the Alpha and Omega of the world's 
life. He took upon Him the nature of man ; had a real 
human birth; grew in wisdom and virtue as He grew in 
years; was tempted and tried as we are, only without 
sin; as a man, wrestled with the curse of sin that lay 
upon our general race, with death and with him that had 
the power of death ; as a man^ triumphed on the cross, 
went down into hades, rose again on the third day, and 
finally ascended up on high, leading captivity captive ; 
where He sitteth at the right hand of the Father, and 
from whence He shall come again, as a man, to judge the 
quick and the dead (Matt. xxvi. 64 ; Acts xvii. 31 ; Rev. 
i. 7). Through all these stages, and under all these as- 
pects, His humanity challenges our full unfaltering ac- 
knowledgment and faith ; and the whole power to com- 
municate with it as an earnest reality in this way. 

7. True man, without sin, and yet at the same time 
true God, as our Catechism puts it ; or as it runs in the 
old Athanasian Creed : *^ God, of the substance of the 
Father, begotten before the worlds, and man of the sub- 
stance of His mother, born in the world; perfect God, 
and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh 
subsisting." That is the great mystery of godliness, the 
mystery of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
" which, except a man believe truly and firmly,'' we are 
told, "he cannot be saved." 

8. Such believing is determined directly and imme- 
diately by the authority of its object, before all power of 



222 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS. 

understanding the nature and constitution of the mys- 
tery itself which is thus embraced. The apprehension 
of faith is not from knowledge, but in order to knowl- 
edge. The fact of the Trinity manifested through the 
fact of the Incarnate Son of God, goes before the dogma 
of the Trinity comprehended theoretically in the dogma 
of the Incarnation; and the faith of the Church was sure 
of both facts in the beginning, as we know, long before 
the sense of either was brought to any clear dogmatic 
expression. And thus it is that universally true Chris- 
tian faith regards primarily Christ Himself, and not any 
doctrine of, Christ ; although Christ is at once for it 
again the root of all right doctrine, as well as the prin- 
ciple of all right life. To believe in Christ as very God 
and very man, it is not necessary that I should be able 
in the first place to see how the Divine can be thus in- 
wardly and organically joined with the human in His 
person. I may feel the full force of the fact as it con- 
fronts me in the evangelical history, without being able 
to understand it. Theological science has not yet been 
able to express it in full ; perhaps will never be able to 
do so in this world. It is a study even for angels ; and 
how then should it be otherwise than largely incompre- 
hensible for men ? But faith here waits in no sense for 
theological science. It finds the whole Gospel in the 
personal Christ Himself, and finds it to be here at the 
same time the wisdom of God and the power of God unto 
salvation. 

9. The saving power of faith lies thus in what it em- 
braces, which is ultimately always '' Christ come in the 
flesh/' and not in any worth of faith itself otherwise con- 
sidered. Its whole worth holds in its office of appre- 
hending in a real way the objective revelation which 



NATURE AND GRACE, 223 

God has been pleased to make of Himself in His Son 
Jesus Christ ; which revelation, thus apprehended, Christ 
Himself assures us (John xvii. 3), is nothing less than 
life eternal. The Christian salvation in this way, while 
it ends in subjective experience, draws all its force pri- 
marily from realities which are beyond and high above 
this experience. There can be no true experimental 
piety in the Christian sense, that is not the product of 
these heavenly and supernatural realities, working upon 
the soul and taking hold upon the life from their own 
objective sphere. The objectivities of the Gospel, as we 
may call them, are in this way of more account than its 
subjectivities. They are emphatically those ''powers of 
the world to come," that are spoken of in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews as entering into all Christian experience ; 
powers, which flow down into men from above, issuing 
from Christ, the Lord of life and glory, and mediated for 
the apprehension of faith by the power of the Holy 
Ghost through the word and sacraments. Forth out 
from the prison-house of self, and away from the transi- 
tory, perishing show of things seen and temporal, 
through the aspect or look of faith continually turned 
toward Jesus, the great forerunner and cham.pion of the 
Christian faith ; that is the wisdom of the saints^ the vir- 
tue of the just, and the only law of deliverance from this 
present evil world. *' For this is the victory that over- 
cometh the world," according to Saint John, " even our 
faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he 
that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (i John 

V. 4, 5). 

10. Let us consider well, then, that we may always 
firmly hold fast, what is the true order of nature and 
grace, the right relation of earth to heaven, or of things 



224 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

which are seen and temporal to things which are unseen 
and eternal. We have to do here in our present life with 
two worlds. Our communication with one, the world 
of matter, is by sense and science based on sense ; our 
communication with the other, the world of spirit, is by- 
faith and knowledge proceeding from faith. The two 
worlds, of course, are with God one system, and in this 
view there can be no contradiction ultimately between 
the truths of natural science and the truths of faith ; be- 
tween the economy of the life that now is, and the econ- 
omy of the life to come. They must be at last, we know 
perfectly well, one economy. But they are not this at 
once for our present apprehension. On the contrary, 
they seem to be widely disparate orders of existence, 
that are in painful conflict on all sides, one with the 
other; so that it has been through all ages the great 
problem of life, how to harmonize their deep-toned dis- 
cord. In the bosom of Christianity, especially, this con- 
flict is brought to its fullest force and consciousness. It 
is the conflict here between nature and the supernatural, 
between science and faith, the history of which runs 
through all the Christian centuries ; but the full crisis of 
which seems to have been reached only in our own time. 
Now it has become emphatically the burden of the 
world's universal life, the question of all questions for 
our universal modern civilization. It is moving the 
thunders of the Vatican in one way, and stirring the 
depths of all Protestantism in another way. It is taking 
hold of politics as well as religion ; kings, princes, par- 
liaments and statesmen are sorely troubled with its pres- 
ence. All our science, all our business, all our educa- 
tion are entangled in the mighty dilemma one way or 
another, and have no power any more to hold themselves 
aloof from its practical challenge. 



NATURE AND GRACE, 225 

This it is, dear young friends, that forms, beyond all 
other considerations, the grand and solemn interest of 
the period in which you are called to live and work in 
the world, and that more than all else, to my own mind, 
throws an awful responsibility prospectively on your 
future lives. The critical struggle between the terres- 
trial and the supernal, to which I have now been direct- 
ing your attention, is one in which you must all from 
this time forward, as children of your time and age, take 
more or less active part. You cannot be neutral in the 
warfare. It is too broad and deep for that. Not to be 
on the side of the Lord here, is to be on the side of 
Satan. 

How faith and science are to be ultimately harmon- 
ized, I am not prepared to say. It is not necessary, it 
seems to me, that we should be able to solve the ques- 
tion in full in our present state. There are, however, 
four general propositions in the case, which we are 
bound to assert and maintain : 

First. The conflict between the two spheres, as the 
world now stands, is not imaginary only, but most posi- 
tively real, and it is growing in terrible significance every 
day. It has not been decided and ended yet, either on 
one side or on the other, and to ignore it is but the trick 
of the ostrich hiding her head in the sand to escape the 
hand of her pursuer. 

Secondly, Science is not required to do blind homage 
to the authority of faith, exercised over it in an outward, 
mechanical way, according to the modern ultramontane 
theory of the Church of Rome. 

Thirdly. Faith must not be required, on the other 
hand, to follow passively the authority of science, ac- 
cording to the fond view of the Spencers, Darwins, and 
15 



226 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

Huxleys of our day ; the modern Weltanschaumig in gen- 
eral, as it is called in Germany, by which naturalism and 
humanitarianism are made to take the place of the old 
supernatural faith altogether, and Christianity is found 
resolving itself into a new moral creation springing up 
from the earth, instead of a new spiritual creation in 
Christ Jesus, coming down from heaven. 

Fourthly, Then we are bound, and for our faith also it 
is possible, to reverse this order of looking at the world, 
and so to organize our scheme of thought and life, that 
the earthly shall be felt with us to depend upon the 
heavenly, instead of the heavenly upon the earthly. 

This does not mean any such wilful immolation of 
natural reason and conscience on the altar of religion, as 
the modern Jesuitic theory of Rome demands. But it 
does mean that the principle of the Christian faith, as 
supernatural, shall be regarded as independent of the 
principle of all mere natural life and science; and that in 
the relation of the two principles to each other, moreover, 
the first shall be held to be of higher authority always 
than the second, because in fact coming before this in 
the true idea of the world, however seeming to come 
after it in the actual world-process. In other words, the 
only true ultimate order both of essential being and of 
knowledge, in the general relation of the world of nature 
to the world of spirit, is in reality not from below upward, 
but from above downward — not a scaling of the heavens 
by the powers of the earth, but a flowing down upon the 
earth of the powers of heaven. That, therefore, is the 
only law of harmony in the end between nature and the 
supernatural, between the human and the divine (illus- 
trated and enforced by universal analogy in the natural 
creation itself) ; and faith, as independent of science and 



NATURE AND GRACE. 227 

greater than science, consists just in the power of seeing 
and owning this, whether it be able at the time or not 
able, to see in what way actually the claims of science are 
to be reconciled with its demands. If need be, faith can 
afford to wait for the final and full resolution of that 
"conflict of ages," till these outward heavens shall pass 
away as a scroll, and this panoramic time-vision shall 
lose itself at last in the light of the world that lies be- 
yond time. 

Need I say that the principle of Christian faith in this 
independent character, is not an abstract thought of any 
kind ; the idea of the Absolute or Unconditioned in the 
sense of Kant or Sir William Hamilton, or that pure 
nescience which regards the infinite as the simply un- 
knowable and unknown, in the sense of Herbert Spencer 
and the modern Humanitarian school generally ? The 
principle plants itself, not on an abstraction, but on the 
very inmost reality of the world's actual being, which it 
is just the province and the special power of faith then 
(in distinction from sense, Heb. xi. 1-3) to authenticate 
and make sure to our human consciousness. 

This objective reality is nothing other than the word 
of God, which is present as a living power in all divine 
revelation, as it has been spoken at sundry times and in 
divers manners through ages past by the prophets. 

It is of His word in such wide general view God Him- 
self speaks, Is. Iv. 8-1 1, where He says : ''My thoughts 
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. 
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 
ways higher than your waj's, and my thoughts than your 
thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow 
from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the 
earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may 



228 COLLEGE- CHAPEL SERMONS. 

give seed to the sower and bread to the eater ; so shall 
my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall 
not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that 
which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto 
I sent it." 

It is of the word in the same broad sense that St. 
Peter also speaks (i Pet. i. 23-25), where he says of 
Christians that they are '' born again, not of corruptible 
seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which 
liveth and abideth for ever." To which he adds imme- 
diately : ''All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of nian 
as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the 
flower thereof falleth away ; but the word of the Lord 
endureth forever. And this is the word which by the 
gospel is preached unto you." 

But what the divine vi^ord is in such supernatural and 
really objective view comes ultimately to its full, abso- 
lute sense and force, as we know, only in our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, who is the Word Incarnate, the 
Divine Personal Logos, the eternal Son of God, incor- 
porated into the very life of the world through union 
with our fallen nature, and made to be thus the Son of 
Man, for the great work of man's redemption. And here 
it is emphatically, therefore, that the grand descending 
order of God's creation comes fully and overwhelmingly 
into view, stultifying and turning into contempt the hu- 
manitarian imagination of an earth-born or earth-pro- 
duced heaven in every shape and forrn. 

'' Ye are from beneath/' we hear Him say ; *' I am 
from above : ye are of this world ; I am not of this world. 
I said therefore that ye shall die in your sins ; for if ye 
believe not that I am he, ye shall die m your sins " 
(John viii. 23, 24). 



NATURE AND GRACE, 229 

And so in our text : '' No man hath ascended up to 
heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the 
Son of man which is in heaven." 

This is the Christian Weltanschauung , in difference from 
every world scheme that starts from below, from the 
premises of mere nature, from the study of man as the 
highest out-birth simply of the world in its present state, 
and claims the right then of measuring the possibilities 
of the infinite and eternal by the rules of science drawn 
from the empirical and purely terrestrial sphere. 

And who will dare to say that this stand-point of faith, 
found directly and immediately in the historical heaven- 
descended fact of Jesus Christ (the deepest truth of the 
world, if Christ Himself be true), is less rational or sure, 
either for the right understanding of life, or for the right 
use of life, than the posture of science undertaking to 
scan or scale the spiritual heights of creation from any 
lower position ? 

Say not, that this supernatural, heaven-descended fact 
is itself, since Christ has returned to heaven, no other 
now than a theological theory or doctrine. It is still 
before us as an ever-living fact in the evangelical history, 
and it lives also through the ages in the faith of the holy 
Catholic Church. We have it in the Apostles' Creed. 
That Creed depends in no way on science. It is at once 
and in its own right, the vision of what is highest, and 
therefore deepest also, in the constitution of the world's 
life, flowing down directly from God the Father through 
Christ, as the power of a new creation needed in this 
way to complete the sense of the old. 

Here, then, is the great practical issue to which we 
are brought by our subject : the issue of ages, which, I 
have said before, is upon our own time, perhaps, as on no 



230 COLLEGE CHAPEL SERMONS, 

previous time, and the full solemnity of which you are 
now called to meet in passing out into the world. The 
conflict between unbelieving science and faith, between 
nature and the supernatural^ between the powers of what 
St. Paul calls *' this present evil world" and the ^^ powers 
of the world to come ; ^' in one word, between the spirit 
of anti- Christ, denying that Christ is come in the flesh, 
and the spirit of true faith, confessing this great mystery 
of godliness ; this conflict, I say, which underlies so pro- 
foundly the seething, tumultuating forces of the time, is 
one in which you also are now called to take active side 
and part, and which you have no power to escape. 

Let me urge upon you then the importance of not 
throwing yourselves forth upon the open sea of life, in 
these circumstances, without the ballast of firmly estab- 
lished principle ; without the compass of heaven-directed 
intelligence and thought ; without the rudder of a reso- 
lute Christian purpose and will ; only to be at the mercy 
of all winds and waves, and to float hither and thither 
with any current into which you may happen to fall. 
That would indeed be unworthy of your education, and 
might well cause us to feel that our labor bestowed upon 
you had been in vain. But I hope and trust better things 
of you, though I thus speak ; and therefore it is that I 
call upon you on this occasion^ to look the question be- 
fore you squarely in the face, and to meet it at once in a 
full and clear-minded decision. 

In the language of Joshua's farewell charge to the tribes 
of Israel, let me say to you now, in this parting address : 
*' Choose ye this day whom ye will serve ; '^ and let your 
right election, made now and here, stand as the solemn 
memorial of a covenant between you and God, to be re- 
membered in all time to come. Before you are the two 



NATURE AND GRACE. 231 

WeltanschauMugen^ the two great world schemes, to which 
I have been directing your attention at the present time : 
the humanitarian theory of thought and Hfe on the one 
hand, making spirit the outbirth of nature, — the celestial, 
the sublimation simply of the terrestrial; and on the 
other hand the theory of Christ and Christianity, and of 
the Apostles' Creed, resolving the highest life of the 
world in the down-flowing life of heaven. In the face of 
this alternative, let me ask, what think ye of Christ ? 
Whose son is He ? " Whom say ye," He asks of you 
Himself, '' that I the Son of man am ? " Here is the 
test at last of all true Christianity, whether doctrinal or 
practical. See that the right answer to it, as of old with 
Nathanael and Simon Peter, be with you also the one 
glorious guiding star of your lives. 

'^ Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift 
and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down 
from the Father ot lights, with whom is no variableness, 
neither shadow of turning. Of His own will begat He 
us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of 
first-fruits of His creatures " (James i. 16-18). ^^ Ye, 
therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, 
beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the 
wicked" (the naturalistic, humanitarian scoffers of the 
age), " fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in 
grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. 
Amen. (2 Pet. iii. 17, 18). 



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